Young Spartans Exercising

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Young Spartans Exercising is a painting by Edgar Degas, begun around 1860. It is oil on canvas and measures about 109.5 by 155 cm. The work is in the National Gallery, London.

The scene shows two groups of teenage Spartans: five girls on the left and five boys on the right. The girls appear to taunt or beckon the boys, while in the background mothers and a man (thought to be the boys’ mothers and Lycurgus) watch. Behind them sits Sparta with Mount Taygetus in the distance, a reference to the old belief that unfit children were discarded by the city. The girls and the man are topless and the boys are nude; the women in the background are fully clothed.

Degas began the painting in 1860 and kept reworking it over the years. It remained unfinished when he died. X-rays show he changed the youths’ positions and even their number, which explains why the foreground women appear to have ten legs in total. Critics note that Degas shifted the faces from a classical Greek ideal to a more modern, urban look.

There is another, less finished version by Degas in the Art Institute of Chicago, which has a different background with more detail and an extra boy on the right.

The painting was bought for the Courtauld Fund in 1924 and is now in the National Gallery. As of February 2025, it is displayed in Room 41.

Interpretations of the work vary. In 1879 Diego Martelli called it very classicizing, but Degas later removed that architectural background. In 1985 Carol Salus suggested the piece might depict Spartan courtship rites rather than a wrestling scene, while Linda Nochlin in 1986 argued that the painting could have multiple meanings and invited viewers to interpret it themselves. Christopher Riopelle, a curator at the National Gallery, noted in 2004 that the work begins as a traditional historical painting but ends up enigmatic.