Study of a Girl's Legs for the painting "Young Spartans"

Study of a Girl's Legs for the painting "Young Spartans" is a compelling black chalk drawing created by Edgar Degas between 1855 and 1867. This essential preparatory study informed the creation of one of the artist’s most significant early history paintings, Young Spartans Exercising, which depicts adolescent boys and girls challenging each other in an open landscape.

Executed with precise and careful strokes, this drawing focuses intently on the anatomical detail of the figure. Degas employed black chalk to suggest the volume, weight distribution, and subtle musculature of the young subject’s legs, captured perhaps from a live model. This meticulous focus on specific anatomical parts, isolating the lower limbs from the full figure, demonstrates Degas’s commitment to academic realism, an approach foundational to his neoclassical training. Such dedicated observation was necessary to accurately render the dynamic and complex poses required in the final composition, where the figures are engaged in spirited movement.

This study spans a significant period of creation, reflecting the duration and complexity of the preparatory work Degas undertook before finalizing his large canvases. Created during a time when the artist was transitioning his practice from purely historical subjects toward scenes of modern life, this work bridges his classical grounding with his developing realist eye. Today, the work is highly valued for its insight into the artist’s process and remains a key item in the drawings collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As this foundational study is often available for scholarly review, and high-quality prints derived from preparatory works of this era are sometimes considered public domain, it continues to influence students and admirers of Degas’s work worldwide.