Young Spartans Exercising – (Edgar Degas) Previous Next


Artist:

Style: Impressionism

Topic: Girls

Technique: Oil

Young Spartans Exercising, also known as Young Spartans, is an oil on canvas painting by French impressionist artist Edgar Degas. The work depicts two groups of male and female Spartan youths exercising, though the subject matter of the painting has, in recent times, been challenged. The work is now in the permanent collection of The National Gallery in London. The painting depicts as its subject matter two groups of youths, four women and five men, with the young women apparently taunting or beckoning the men. The women are positioned to the left of the painting, the men to the right, while in-between the two groups in the background appear a third group watching the youths; their appearance striking as they are fully dressed while the youths in the foreground stand naked or topless. Behind the onlookers, identified as Lycurgus and the youths' mothers, lies the city of Sparta, dominated by Mount Taygetus, from which the bodies of the society's "unfit" children were supposedly thrown.

This artwork is in the public domain.

Artist

Download

Click here to download

Permissions

Free for non commercial use. See below.

Edgar Degas – Most viewed artworks

Public domain

This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. However - you may not use this image for commercial purposes and you may not alter the image or remove the watermark.

This applies to the United States, Canada, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.


Note that a few countries have copyright terms longer than 70 years: Mexico has 100 years, Colombia has 80 years, and Guatemala and Samoa have 75 years. This image may not be in the public domain in these countries, which moreover do not implement the rule of the shorter term. Côte d'Ivoire has a general copyright term of 99 years and Honduras has 75 years, but they do implement that rule of the shorter term.