On Stage I

Edgar Degas

National Gallery of Art

We look up at a stage from an orchestra pit or the first row of seats in a theater in this horizontal etching and drypoint print. The forms of people along the bottom edge of the scene, the two ballerinas on stage, and the backdrop behind them are scratched and scrawled in, sometimes heavily, creating areas of inky black. Closest to us and at the bottom center of the paper, the tall neck of an upright bass rests on the shoulder of a bearded man, who we only see from the moustache up. To our left, the hair, forehead, and noses of two more heads face him, and another, to our right, faces away. The instrument’s scrolling headstock reaches halfway up the composition, and it mostly obscures the dancers, who wear light-colored bodices and knee-length tutus. The background is almost filled with dark, squiggly lines. The print is signed in the bottom right corner, “Degas.”