Ballerina Posing for a Photographer
Ballerina Posing for a Photographer is an oil on canvas painting by Edgar Degas, from 1875. It depicts a young ballet dancer posing in front of a standing mirror; in the background, through a large window, is seen an elevated view of the walls of the houses opposite and the snow-covered rooftops of Paris. It is held in the Pushkin Museum, in Moscow. Description In this work, Degas's relentless eye captures a sparsely furnished interior with a ballerina standing on a grayish wooden floor as the object of his attention. She is not displaying herself for an audience, but for a photographer who came to immortalize her in her work: therefore, she is looking for a nice position with the help of a mirror. As in other works by Degas, the dancer's gesture is not taken at the intense moment of an artistic performance, but when her limbs, exhausted, assume a strangely deformed, almost grotesque aspect. Provenance The painting was first exhibited in London in the Spring of 1875. It was sold by Durand-Ruel in 1902 to the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin for 35,000 francs, who displayed his extensive private collection to the public at his palace in 1909. After