Nobody in this painting is actually performing. Degas caught his dancers backstage, between poses, just getting ready.
What you're looking at
Edgar Degas painted Dancers, Pink and Green around 1890, part of his extensive series of paintings and pastels showing ballet dancers backstage at the Paris Opéra. It now hangs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One dancer in the foreground fixes her hair before her call to the stage; nearby, two more dancers are each caught in their own small routine — one adjusting a strap, another steadying herself — none of them posed or performing for an audience.
Paint that behaves like pastel
Degas mixed his paint with white and layered it thickly, echoing the texture of his own pastel drawings, which gives the dancers' costumes a soft, chalky quality. The painting's own title comes from its color pairing: a rose-toned bodice set against a green tutu, an unusual color combination Degas deliberately built the composition around.
Behind the dancers, a wooden panel splits the backstage wings in two, and one dancer rests her hand on its edge — a small, ordinary gesture that makes the whole scene feel observed rather than staged. According to the Met's own catalogue notes, there's also a top-hatted Opera patron visible in the scene, allowed backstage during a performance, a reminder that wealthy audience members had access most theatergoers today would never get.
One detail to look for
Look for that top-hatted figure among the dancers. Degas often included these patrons in his backstage scenes, quietly documenting a real and somewhat uncomfortable part of Paris Opéra life alongside the beauty of the ballet itself.
See it at its real size
Our canvas print is labeled against the true size of the original — 82.2 x 75.6 cm, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art — so what you hang is honestly scaled, not a guess. Shop the canvas print.