Young Spartans Exercising

Begun around 1860 and reworked over years, Young Spartans Exercising at the National Gallery is one of Degas's most ambitious and enigmatic early works — a history painting subject treated with startling modernity. Showing adolescent Spartan girls challenging boys to wrestling matches, Degas based the scene on classical texts but gave his figures the features of contemporary Parisian youths from Montmartre, deliberately collapsing the ancient and modern. The work was shown at the fifth Impressionist exhibition in 1880, long after its conception, suggesting Degas's ongoing ambivalence about its status. It occupies a remarkable transitional position between academic history painting and the modern body studies that would define his mature work.

The composition is organized around the confrontation of two groups, boys and girls, with a landscape backdrop that recalls classical frieze arrangements. Despite the ancient subject, the figures are rendered with Degas's characteristic directness — athletic bodies without idealization, posed in functional rather than heroic stances. The paint surface is layered and reworked, reflecting its long gestation. The background landscape is painted more summarily than the figures.