Description
Year of creation: 1874
Original size: 83.8 cm x 58.4 cm
Painting style: Impressionism
Original technique: Oil on canvas
Located: Burrell Collection, Glasgow (inv. 35.246)
The Rehearsal – Edgar Degas
A rehearsal room with a very wide, almost empty plane of wooden floor taking up the whole lower left half. At the left a spiral staircase descends with a rounded wooden underside; of the dancers on it only the legs are visible, cut off by the upper edge. Our canvas painting keeps exactly that view, which leaves half the scene outside.
Stairs that cut through bodies
The cut is a constant move of Degas’s, and here it is at its most radical: of three dancers on the stairs only legs and shoes remain, everything else being above the frame. The viewer completes the bodies, and that is precisely why the scene feels like something happening rather than something arranged. At the foot of the stairs a dancer in a pale yellowish skirt stands with her back to us.
Empty parquet as the main subject
The warm browns and pinks of the floor are broken by white skirts and a red band along the wall. In the middle two dancers in white and pink skirts, with dark ribbons at their necks, bend forward with outstretched arms, close to the tall windows. The emptiness between them is not a shortcoming of the composition but its largest part.
Who else is in the room
At the right a dancer in a dark green bodice sits on a bench, seen in profile; behind her stands an older woman in a dark dress with red, and a man in light trousers. At the far right a dancer straightens her sash. The same rehearsal on stage is shown by Ballet Rehearsal on Stage, and a small room with a mirror by The Dancing Class. The signature is at the lower left.
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.
