Edgar Degas, Dancers Practicing at the Barre
Dancers Practicing at the Barre, dated 1877 and executed in mixed media on canvas, captures two ballet students at work rather than in performance, a choice consistent with Edgar Degas's broader interest in the discipline and labor behind the stage spectacle. The mixed technique — pigment applied with varying degrees of dilution and surface texture — reflects Degas's continual experimentation with materials during the 1870s, a decade in which he moved fluidly between oil, pastel, and combined media, often within a single picture. The canvas entered the collection through the H. O. Havemeyer bequest of 1929. Scion's advisory work draws on exactly this kind of technical specificity — medium, support, and condition — when assessing how a picture should be described, insured, and eventually valued.