The rehearsal of the ballet onstage

Degas, Edgar (1834-1917)

Item type:

painting

Date of creation:

1874

Height:

54.3 cm  (21 3/8 in.)

Width:

73.0 cm  (28 3/4 in.)

Technique / Medium:

oil colors freely mixed with turpentine, with traces of water color and pastel over pen and ink on paper

School:

French

Description

Young female ballet students rehearsing onstage, ballet master instructing; two men seated in background (right).
There are three similar versions of this scene, and their precise relationship has bedeviled scholars for decades. The largest, painted in grisaille (Musée d’Orsay, Paris), appeared in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. The two others, tentatively dated the same year, are in the Metropolitan’s collection. This painting probably preceded the version in pastel (29.100.39), which is more freely handled. The importance that Degas attached to the composition is evident in the preparatory drawings that he made for almost every figure, from the dancer scratching her back in the foreground to the woman yawning next to the stage flat.

Iconclass

48C84
the ballet, ballet performance

RIdIM images

Image URLs

image link 1

RIdIM record id

3755