About this work
Two figures occupy the center of the canvas, their backs turned toward the viewer, caught mid-exchange in a loosely rendered landscape — an unusual choice for Degas, who more often positioned his dancers against the velvet dark of stage wings or the stark geometry of rehearsal rooms.
They are surrounded by trees and shrubs, the natural setting giving the work a rare openness. What grabs the eye first is the contradiction written into the paint itself: the title promises green skirts, but these complex, multi-layered ballet tutus, illuminated by acrid stage lighting, contain almost no green — the translucent edges glow scarlet, the shadows read as turquoise, yellow highlights pulse across the denser fabric.
Degas is known to have worked on this canvas over several years, building it in layers — applying paint, then scraping and sanding the surface to achieve a texture that hovers between oil and pastel.
The painting is believed to have been created between approximately 1894 and 1899 — a period when Degas was in his sixties, his eyesight failing but his command of material at its most uncompromising. By this point he had written hundreds of images of ballet dancers across pastel, oil, charcoal, pencil, and gouache, and had mastered each technique so thoroughly that he began to deliberately play them against one another — applying oil paint with the long, bright strokes of pastel chalks.
In this canvas, Degas seems to seize on an ordinary, everyday moment between two dancers — catching it as if in passing, refusing to linger. That quality of the glanced-at rather than the posed-for is what separates it from his more celebrated stage compositions. The work remains in a private collection, a rarity that adds to its mystique within the Degas canon.
As wall art, this painting rewards a room that can hold a little ambiguity — a study, a sitting room with warm afternoon light, or a dining room where the eye needs somewhere unhurried to rest. The palette of soft greens and pinks creates a calm, serene atmosphere that reads as intimate rather than grand. It speaks to the viewer who appreciates what's withheld as much as what's shown: two figures in conversation, a landscape that barely resolves, colour that refuses to be what the title says it is. The mood is contemplative, slightly conspiratorial — the feeling of having caught something private without quite understanding it.
