Four Dancers

Degas is famous for his depictions of ballerinas. This painting is one of his most perplexing examples. Four dancers appear together, adjusting their shoulder straps as if preparing to step onto the stage.

But is this a stage at all? Or is it an elaborate, dreamlike landscape with distant haystacks rising under a dramatically colored sky? Are these four separate women or a single dancer twirling through space and time? Art often blurs the lines between reality and fantasy. In this work, Degas invites us to decide...