Artwork · 19th century · Edgar Degas

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The Dance Class

Edgar Degas1874Oil on canvas83.5 × 77.2 cm

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At a glance

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A rehearsal room of the Paris Opera ballet, where young dancers gather around an old ballet master leaning on his stick.
Painted by Edgar Degas in 1874.
Not a glittering performance but the in-between time of class: waiting, resting, fixing a skirt.

Reading the picture

5 places to look closer

Tap a number on the painting to jump to its note, or a close-up to see that spot in the whole picture.

Look at the old man on the right, leaning on a tall stick. His gray suit makes his red shirt stand out. He is known to be Jules Perrot, a famous ballet master. With both hands stacked on the top of his stick, he looks toward the dancers on the left.
Zoom in on the head of the dancer in the front center. She wears a red flower and a pink flower in her hair, and a round pendant on a black ribbon at her throat. Her head is bowed as she smooths her skirt. She is not looking at the teacher at all.
On the wall at the upper left hangs a yellow poster with heavy black letters. A dancer's head hides half of it, so you can read only the first letters, starting G and U. The poster has been read as an advertisement for Rossini's opera Guillaume Tell. Even on the rehearsal room wall, the Opera's shows are on display.
Zoom into the raised area at the back right. Grown women in hats and shawls stand among the dancers. They are usually read as the dancers' mothers, who came along to class. In front of them, girls rest with hands on their hips or lean on each other.
Look at the bottom left corner. The scroll of a large stringed instrument lies near the floor, and beside it is the signature, Degas. Just behind it is a dancer's foot in a shoe with a pink trim. Instruments and dancing feet are all mixed together, just like in a real practice room.

When it was painted

In 1874 Degas turned forty in Paris. That February his father died in Naples. That spring he joined Monet, Renoir and others in a show that would later be called the first Impressionist exhibition.

The picture began with an order placed the year before. The client was Jean-Baptiste Faure, a celebrated baritone at the Paris Opera and a keen collector who owned a number of paintings by Manet. Faure wanted a scene of the Opera's ballet dancers at an examination or a class.

Degas started one canvas, reworked it several times, and set it aside. Then, in the fall of 1874, he painted this picture on a fresh canvas. It was delivered to Faure that November, and Degas was paid five thousand francs. The first canvas was later heavily revised and now hangs in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

The room itself has a story. In the fall of 1873, the Opera house on the rue Le Peletier burned down. The rehearsal room in this picture is known as a room of that lost building. The ballet master leaning on his stick, Jules Perrot, was by then a veteran in his sixties.

In 1876 Faure lent the picture to the second Impressionist exhibition under the title Examen de danse, Dance Examination. It came to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1986, as a bequest from Mrs. Harry Payne Bingham.

Now look again at the dancer in the middle with one arm raised high. Remember that the painting was once shown as a dance examination. Is she taking her test in front of Monsieur Perrot right now?

The painter

Edgar Degas

1834–1917

When painting this, the artist was about 40 years old

All paintings by Edgar Degas →

More by the same painter

A Woman Seated beside a Vase of Flowers (Madame Paul Valpinçon?)1865

Henri Degas and His Niece Lucie Degas (The Artist's Uncle and Cousin)1875–76

The Millinery Shop1879-86

Questions to think about

Look for itHow many dancers can you find who are not looking at the teacher?
Why?Why do you think Degas chose a messy moment in class instead of a performance?
What about you?Thinking of all the practice and waiting behind the stage, are the young people who work behind today's shows and videos protected well enough?

Same period