Arabesque

This drawing of dancers is a study for a diminutive 1941 painting of the same name in the collection of the Evansville Museum of Art and Science, Evansville, Indiana. (Another study for the same painting is in the collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.) As was sometimes his practice, Cadmus later created an etching of the composition; see 2005.35 in the Morgan collection. Lincoln Kirstein, co-founder of New York City Ballet and a Cadmus expert, writes that Cadmus, who regularly observed classes at the School of American Ballet, "recognized the tradition of academic ballet as akin to his own preoccupation with traditional mastery of the human body."