Young Spartans Exercising [SEP] creator
Young Spartans Exercising
Young Spartans Exercising, also known as Young Spartans and also as Young Spartan Girls Challenging Boys, is an early oil on canvas painting by French impressionist artist Edgar Degas. The work depicts two groups of male and female Spartan youth exercising and challenging each other in some way. The work is now in the permanent collection of the National Gallery in London.
Depiction.
The painting depicts as its subject matter two groups of older children, four girls and five boys, with the girls apparently taunting or
uncertain; acquaintances of the artist referred to it either as "Le Viol" or "Intérieur", and it was under the latter title that Degas exhibited it for the first time in 1905. The painting is housed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Background.
Degas painted "Interior" at a time when his growing commitment to Realism had led him away from his earlier preoccupation with historical subjects such as "Sémiramis Building Babylon" (1860–62), "Young Spartans Exercising" (ca.1860), and the