1860
oil
canvas
From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago
Young Spartan Girls Challenging Boys is a 1860 oil by Edgar Degas, a Impressionism work, held at Art Institute of Chicago.
This painting shows a group of young Spartan girls facing off with boys. They stand tall in simple tunics. One girl points toward the boys. The boys look ready to fight. Degas based this on an old story about Spartan laws. He used bright colors but deep shadows to show the scene. The girls seem calm. The boys look more aggressive. Look up the Art Institute of Chicago to see this painting in person.
In 1859 Edgar Degas returned to Paris following a prolonged stay in Italy, where he visited relatives in Naples and Florence and attended life classes at the Académie Française in Rome. This picture, undertaken around 1860, speaks to his ambition to realize canvases featuring scenes from the Bible, as well as ancient and more recent history. Degas took his subject from the life of Lycurgus, a legendary ninth-century b.c. Spartan lawgiver. Lycurgus’s social reforms included an unusual method of physical training in which adolescent girls competed on an equal footing with boys, exercising nude…
Artist’s studio until his death in 1917 [according to Lafond 1919]; sold at second sale of the “Atelier Degas,” Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, December 11-13, 1918, no. 7, to the artist’s brother, René de Gas [according to letter from Charles Durand-Ruel to Richard Brettell, dated May 10, 1983; copy in curatorial file]; René de Gas (died 1921); his estate, until 1927 [according to letter cited above]; sold, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, November 10, 1927, no. 76, to Durand-Ruel, Paris [according to annotated sale catalogue, Getty Research Institute Library, Los Angeles; copy in curatorial file];…
Paris, André J. Seligmann, Réhabilitation du Sujet, November 17-December 9, 1934, cat. no. 83. Bern, Kunstmuseum, Degas, November 25, 1951-January 13, 1952, cat. no. 2. Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Edgar Degas, 1952, cat. no. 5. Paris, Galerie de la Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Degas dans les collections françaises, June 9-26, 1955, cat. no. 9. Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Edgar Degas: 1834-1917, June 9-October 1, 1960, cat. no. 2. Tokyo, Seibu Museum of Art, Exposition Degas, September 23, 1976-November 3, 1976; Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, November 7-December 10, 1976; Centre Culturel de…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas on 19 July 1834 in Paris, Edgar Degas came from an affluent banking family with aristocratic roots and spent his childhood among the cultivated circles of the French capital.
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