Description
Year of creation: 1870s
Original size: 54.6 cm x 40.6 cm
Painting style: Impressionism
Original technique: Oil on canvas
Located: The Phillips Collection, Washington (inv. 2001.014.0001)
Dance Rehearsal in the Foyer – Edgar Degas
A large rehearsal room, seen along its length. Tall arched windows with leaded bars rise along the back and right walls, and pale daylight falls through them. To the right of centre a brown column with a moulded base stands and divides the space. Our hand-painted canvas painting keeps exactly that quiet, working light.
Dancers spread across the floor
The dancers in white skirts are spread over the floor the way people arrange themselves rather than the way a composition arranges them: at the far left one stands with a hand on her hip, beside her a second bends forward to her shoe, in the middle a third has her back to us and her skirt opens into a circle. By the windows at the back stands a smaller group.
Leaning on the barre
At the far right a dancer rests her head on her arms laid along the barre – the only figure in the scene at rest. At the left, behind, a figure in dark clothes raises a hand, probably an instruction we cannot hear. At the lower right a dark opening with a rail gives onto the floor below, which opens the room downwards and takes away its solid base.
Thin paint, visible drawing
The wooden floor is wide and almost empty in the foreground. Greys and greenish tones hold the whole together, the paint is thin and the drawing shows through it in places – the painter left the process visible, not only the result. The same rehearsal with more figures is shown by The Rehearsal, and a rehearsal on stage by Ballet Rehearsal on Stage.
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.
