Edgar Degas

This image of a ballet performance was created by applying softened ground on the plate, into which Degas imprinted textured materials and drew, through paper, with a variety of pointed and broad-tipped tools, leaving crayon-like markings. Afterward, he used a roulette—a textured wheel—to make the patterns of regular dots seen throughout the backround.

Degas used nontraditional materials not only for printing plates but as etching tools. Around the time this print was made, he experimented with a double-pointed pen used by accountants, a wire brush, an emery stone, and the carbon rod used in electric arc lamps, among other tools.