Description
Year of creation: 1874
Original size: 81.5 cm x 65 cm
Painting style: Impressionism
Original technique: Oil on canvas
Located: Musée d’Orsay, Paris (inv. RF 1978)
Ballet Rehearsal on Stage – Edgar Degas
A stage during a rehearsal, painted almost in one colour: everything is in browns and ochres, and only the ballet skirts are white. At the left a group of dancers crowds together – one stretches her arms above her head, another bends backwards. In the middle foreground a dancer stands turned away from us, a hand at her head and her skirt spread wide. Our canvas painting keeps exactly that almost colourless light.
A rehearsal, not a performance
This is not a performance but a rehearsal: the costumes are here, the audience is not. By the wings a man in dark clothes sits on a chair, the ballet master, and watches; nobody is dancing for us. At the upper right the empty boxes and the architecture of the house are visible, and at the lower right the edge of the stage curves away, separating the scene from an empty auditorium.
Almost without colour
Degas carried the scene through almost without colour, so that drawing and light do all the work. The skirts are the only white places on the canvas and act as a source of light rather than as clothing; the browns of the background are barely separable from one another. This is not a sketch but a choice – he took the colour away so that the movement would remain.
The same house, another moment
At the right a line of dancers recedes into depth, one with raised arms. The same rehearsal from the other end of the room is shown by The Rehearsal, and the practice room before the stage by The Ballet Class. The signature is at the lower right. The canvas measures 81.5 x 65 cm and is in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.
Our version
Our version is a hand-painted oil painting on canvas. Every canvas is painted individually, in the size and frame you choose. The painter works from the original with brush and oils, so the strokes and the layering stay visible – the part a print cannot reproduce.
