Yellow Dancers (In the Wings)

Yellow Dancers (In the Wings) (1875), at the Art Institute of Chicago, shows dancers waiting in the wings in the yellow-orange light of gas stage lighting — their costumes taking on a warm gold from the artificial illumination. The wing space at the Paris Opéra was a perpetual theatre of the informal: dancers stretching, chatting, watching the performance from the side, adjusting their costumes in the last seconds before entry. The Art Institute of Chicago holds one of North America's finest collections of French Impressionist work, and this wing-space study is among its significant Degas holdings.

The yellow-orange palette created by gas footlight spill in the wings gives the composition an unusual warmth quite different from the daylit rehearsal rooms. Degas captures the way artificial light flattens form and creates a generalised warm cast across figures and surfaces, distinguishing this atmospheric study from his cooler rehearsal compositions.