The rehearsal

Degas, Edgar (1834-1917)

Item type:

painting

Date of creation:

ca. 1873-1878

Height:

47.2 cm  (18 9/16 in.)

Width:

61.5 cm  (24 3/16 in.)

framed: 71.9 x 87.2 x 11.2 cm

Technique / Medium:

oil on canvas

Description

Painting depicts ten dancers (some dancing) in a large studio with tall, bright windows; in the foreground, a seated man plays a violin.

Gallery Text:
This is one of Degas’s earliest paintings of dancers, a subject which he depicted in many media throughout his career. A close look at this canvas reveals a grid underneath the paint layer that he used as part of the preparatory process to record preliminary ideas. Degas later reworked this painting, taking out a stairwell and repositioning some of the figures to add to the rhythmic line of the rehearsing dancers.

When Edmond de Goncourt, the renowned artist, critic, and writer, visited Degas’s studio in 1874, he wrote: “After a great many essays and experiments and trial shoots in all directions, he has fallen in love with modern life, and out of all the subjects of modern life he has chosen washerwomen and ballet dancers. . . . It is a world of pink and white, of female flesh in lawn and gauze, the most delightful of pretexts for using pale, soft tints.” ||Source: Harvard Art Museums website

Iconclass

48CC841
training ~ ballet - CC - female
48CC844
ballet dress - CC - female

Instruments [MIMO Code] (notes)

Violin [3573]

RIdIM images

Image URLs

image link 1

Notes

For perhaps the earliest example of this type of ballet scene created by Degas, see RIdIM record id 591 (Le Foyer)

RIdIM record id

5631