Dancers At The Barre 

Edgar Degas rendered 'Dancers At The Barre' using pastel, a medium consisting of pure pigment ground into a binder and formed into sticks. These sticks, not so different from chalk, allowed him to build layers of color and texture on paper. Pastels sit on the surface rather than being absorbed into the fibers of the paper, which explains the velvety bloom we see here. To achieve this finish, the artist would have needed to apply gentle strokes, but also work quickly to prevent the paper from becoming saturated. The pastel medium offered him an immediacy to capture fleeting moments. Dance was central to the social spectacle of 19th-century Paris, with ballet dancers often emerging from working-class backgrounds. Degas’ choice of pastel, with its delicate surface and powdery residue, almost seems to speak to the fragile position these dancers held within the gilded framework of Parisian society. The very handling of the medium invites us to consider the strenuous labor behind the graceful image. So, next time you look at a pastel drawing, remember the material itself and the hands that shaped it.