Degas | L'etoile (The Dancer on Stage)
Degas | L'etoile (The Dancer on Stage)
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- 100% hand-painted oil on canvas
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- Hanging wire is attached to the back
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About L'etoile (The Dancer on Stage) by Edgar Degas
Degas showed L'Étoile at the third Impressionist exhibition in Paris in April 1877. It is not a painting in the ordinary sense. He began with a monotype — a design brushed in printer's ink onto a smooth plate and pulled once onto paper, giving a soft grey-black image that can never be repeated — and then worked over the whole sheet in pastel.
The viewpoint is the point of the picture. We are looking down onto the stage from a box, high up and off to one side, at the instant the ballerina holds her balance at the end of a solo. Degas gives most of the sheet to bare stage floor and to the flats of the painted scenery, and pushes the dancer off centre with her arm cut by the edge. Nothing is where a conventional composition would put it.
Behind her, half-hidden in the wings, stands a man in black evening dress whose face is cropped away by the scenery. He is an abonné, one of the season-ticket subscribers who were allowed the run of the backstage corridors at the Opéra and who commonly kept a dancer. The picture belonged to Gustave Caillebotte, and came to the French State under his bequest.
L'etoile (The Dancer on Stage) at a glance
- Artist: Edgar Degas (1834–1917)
- Painted: c. 1876–1877, Paris
- Movement: Impressionism
- Original: Musée d'Orsay, Paris
- Medium: Pastel over monotype on paper, 58.4 × 42 cm
Common questions about L'etoile (The Dancer on Stage)
Where is L'etoile now?
The Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Gustave Caillebotte owned it from 1877; after his death in 1894 it was accepted by the State, hung at the Musée du Luxembourg from 1896, and later passed to the Louvre and then the Orsay.
Who is the man in black behind the dancer?
An abonné — a subscriber to the Paris Opéra. Subscription bought access to the wings and the dancers' foyer, and these men were the recognised patrons and protectors of individual dancers. Degas has cut his face off at the scenery flat, so he is a presence rather than a person.
Is L'etoile a painting?
Not exactly. It is pastel worked over a monotype print on paper. Degas made hundreds of monotypes and often used them as a ready-made tonal foundation, laying dry pastel over the printed ink.
Why is the dancer pushed off to one side?
Because Degas is showing you a real sightline. The angle is that of a spectator leaning out of a box above the stage, so the floor rises steeply, the scenery blocks part of the view and the dancer sits low and to the left. The asymmetry and the hard cropping come from Japanese woodblock prints, which Degas collected, and from photography.
How much is L'etoile worth?
It is in the Musée d'Orsay's collection and is not for sale. Degas's auction record is US$41.6 million, paid at Christie's New York in 2022 for a cast of Petite danseuse de quatorze ans.
Own a hand-painted L'etoile (The Dancer on Stage)
This is not a print. Every painting we sell is reproduced in oils on canvas, by hand, by professional artists — no giclée, no computer-generated technique.
This image is made of two different materials doing two different jobs. Underneath is the monotype: printer's ink on paper, thin, cool and transparent, and that is still what the shadowed wings and the dark scenery physically are. Over it Degas laid pastel — opaque dry pigment sitting on the surface — and that is what the dancer is. The stage light reads as light because the ballerina is literally a different substance from the darkness around her, sitting on top of it. A photographic print puts both down as the same ink on the same paper, so the dancer and the wings become equally flat and she no longer stands out of the dark, she just sits in it. Reproduced by hand in oils the same division can be kept: the wings brushed thin and transparent, the dancer built up in solid body colour over them.
- A range of sizes — choose yours above.
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Framing Options: You have 3 choices
Option 1. Choose an outer frame - see images below.
You only need to choose one and the painting will be sent to you framed and ready to hang.
* Below is an example of a customer who chose the Gold Ornate frame
Option 2: Choose a Gallery Wrap Stretched Painting.
If you want the frameless modern gallery wrap look then you only need to choose Stretched Gallery Wrap from the finish option dropdown.
You receive your stretched gallery wrap painting ready to hang - with a hanging wire attached behind.
The back of the Stretched Gallery Wrap looks like the image below - it has a hanging wire!
Option 3: Choose Canvas Only if you want to frame the painting yourself.
Your painting will be sent to you in an art tube - you can then frame it yourself or take it to your local framer.
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