Fan Mount: The Ballet
Edgar Degas·1879
Historical Context
Fan Mount: The Ballet (1879), at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a companion to the Fan Mount: Ballet Girls from the same year, both produced for the 1879 Impressionist exhibition where Degas contributed multiple fan-format works. The fan became for Degas a vehicle for compositional experiment: the curved upper boundary and the narrowing lower point of the open fan forced him to distribute his figures across an unusual space that bore no resemblance to the conventional stage or studio setting. Adapted to the fan format, the ballet becomes a decorative object as much as a narrative subject.
Technical Analysis
The fan's compositional demands — a wide curving top edge narrowing to a point at the bottom — require figures to be distributed in an arc rather than across a horizontal plane. Degas manages the transition between the fan format's decorative function and his typically observational approach by treating the dancers as broadly coloured forms within the curved space.
