Dancer Posing for a Photographer

A young dancer stands alone before a mirror, trying out a pose for the camera, while snow lies on the Paris rooftops outside. Degas caught her not at a moment of glory but in the awkward search for it.

The story behind the painting

Degas painted this oil on canvas in 1875. It shows a young ballet dancer in a bare room, posing in front of a standing mirror. She is not performing for an audience but preparing for a photographer who has come to record her in her work, so she uses the mirror to find a good position. The painting was first exhibited in London in the spring of 1875, the same year it was made, and its French title places the scene in a photographer's studio.

What to look for

The interior is sparsely furnished, and the dancer stands on a greyish wooden floor, the single object of attention. Follow her reflection in the tall mirror, then look past her to the large window in the background. Through it you see, from above, the walls of the houses opposite and the snow-covered rooftops of Paris. The cold, pale light of that winter view surrounds a girl working hard at something that should look effortless.

Meaning and intent

As in other works by Degas, the gesture is not taken at the high point of a performance. It is caught when the limbs, tired, take on a strangely deformed, almost grotesque look. Degas's relentless eye, as the source puts it, prefers the private effort to the public result. The photographer never appears, and the mirror becomes the dancer's only audience, so the painting quietly turns the act of being looked at into its subject.

Legacy

Durand-Ruel sold the painting in 1902 to the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin, who opened his large private collection to the public in his palace in 1909. After the Revolution of 1917 Shchukin left Russia, his collection was nationalised and the palace became a museum. In 1923 it was merged with the collection of Ivan Morozov, and in 1948 the works were divided between Moscow and Leningrad. Degas's dancer went to the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, where she still stands before her mirror.