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Young Spartan Girls Challenging Boys

A brown-toned image of a group of scantily clad young women at left, one holding out her arm toward a group of naked young men standing at right.
CC0 Public Domain Designation

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  • A brown-toned image of a group of scantily clad young women at left, one holding out her arm toward a group of naked young men standing at right.

Date:

c. 1860

Artist:

Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917)

About this artwork

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 in public. Degas would have worked up this monochromatic sketch with layers of color had he completed it, but he left it unfinished when he began a second version of the subject (National Gallery of Art, London).

Status

On View, Gallery 226

Department

Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist

Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas

Title

Young Spartan Girls Challenging Boys

Place

France (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

1855–1865

Medium

Oil on canvas

Inscriptions

Inscribed lower right: Degas

Dimensions

97.4 × 140 cm (38 5/16 × 55 1/8 in.); Framed: 130.2 × 162.6 × 11.8 cm (51 1/4 × 64 × 4 5/8 in.)

Credit Line

Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection

Reference Number

1961.334

IIIF Manifest  The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

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https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/13487/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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