Fan Mount: Ballet Girls
Edgar Degas·1879
Historical Context
Fan Mount: Ballet Girls (1879), at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is one of a small number of fan-shaped works Degas produced for the Impressionist exhibition of 1879, in which several artists contributed fan-format paintings as a nod to the fashionable decorative object. The fan format — the semicircular shape of an open fan — imposed unusual compositional constraints that Degas exploited inventively, curving the stage and dancers around the convex upper edge of the composition. His ballet subjects translated naturally to this format, the dancers' movements adapting to the fan's curvilinear geometry.
Technical Analysis
The fan format requires working within a semicircular compositional field rather than a rectangle, pushing Degas to adapt his spatial arrangements to the curved edge. Figures at the periphery are compressed or cropped by the curving boundary, creating the same sense of casual framing that his rectangular cutoff compositions achieved.
