Dancers at the Barre

Dancers at the Barre, painted around 1900 and now at The Phillips Collection in Washington, belongs to Degas's final phase of ballet imagery — works produced when his eyesight was nearly gone and the figures have been simplified to powerful, almost sculptural essentials. The barre, that fundamental piece of rehearsal equipment, provided Degas with a compositional device throughout his career: a horizontal anchor against which the bodies of working dancers could be measured. In the late works the barre becomes almost abstract, a structural element in a composition that is as much about form and color as it is about dance. These late works anticipate twentieth-century abstraction while remaining rooted in decades of acute observation.

The late style is fully evident: paint is applied with heavy, sweeping marks that model the dancers' bodies with sculptural directness rather than linear precision. The color is intense and non-naturalistic — rich ochres, pinks, and greens applied with the confidence of an artist who has transcended the need for descriptive accuracy. The barre cuts across the composition as a strong horizontal. Forms are simplified to their essential masses, detail sacrificed for expressive power.