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Edgar Degas French
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 816
There are three similar versions of this scene, and their precise relationship has bedeviled scholars for decades. The largest, painted in grisaille (Musée d’Orsay, Paris), appeared in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. The two others, tentatively dated the same year, are in the Metropolitan’s collection. This painting probably preceded the version in pastel (29.100.39), which is more freely handled. The importance that Degas attached to the composition is evident in the preparatory drawings that he made for almost every figure, from the dancer scratching her back in the foreground to the woman yawning next to the stage flat.
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Fig. 1. Edgar Degas, Répétition d’un ballet sur la scène, 1874, oil on canvas, 65 x 81.5 cm (Musée d’Orsay, Paris).
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Fig. 2. Edgar Degas, A Ballet Dancer in Position Facing Three-Quarters Front, ca. 1872–73, graphite, prepared black chalk, white chalk, and touches of blue-green pastel on pink wove paper, squared in prepared black chalk, 41 x 27.6 cm (Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge)
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Fig. 3. Edgar Degas, Standing Dancer, with Arm Raised (L401), ca. 1874 [here dated as], essence painting [or painting with solvent], 59 x 46 cm (formerly Maurice Exsteens collection, Paris)Lemoisne, II, 401
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Fig. 4. Edgar Degas, Danseuse Baillant (L402), ca. 1874 [here dated as], essence drawing on green Bristol board, 54 x 45 cm (whereabouts unknown).Lemoisne II, 402
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Fig. 5. Edgar Degas, Seated Dancer, Profile View, Turning Toward the Right, ca. 1874, essence on blue paper, 22.8 x 29.7 cm (Musée d’Orsay, Paris, département des Arts graphiques du Musée du Louvre [RF 16723]).
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Fig. 6. Edgar Degas, Danseuse penchée en avant, 1873, charcoal heightened with white, 24.4 x 32.4 cm (Musée d’Orsay, Paris, département des Arts graphiques du Musée du Louvre [RF 16725 recto]).
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Fig. 7. Edgar Degas, Notebook 24, p. 27 (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris).
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Fig. 8. Edgar Degas, Notebook 25, p. 29 (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris).
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Fig. 9. Edgar Degas, Two Dancers on a Stage, ca. 1874, oil on canvas, 61.5 x 46 cm (Courtauld Gallery, London).
Artwork Details
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Title: The Rehearsal of the Ballet Onstage
Artist: Edgar Degas (French, Paris 1834–1917 Paris)
Date: ca. 1874
Medium: Oil colors freely mixed with turpentine, with traces of watercolor and pastel over pen-and-ink drawing on cream-colored wove paper, laid down on bristol board and mounted on canvas
Dimensions: 21 3/8 x 28 3/4 in. (54.3 x 73 cm)
Classification: Drawings
Credit Line: H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Gift of Horace Havemeyer, 1929
Accession Number: 29.160.26
Learn more about this artwork
Timeline of Art History
Chronology
France, 1800-1900 A.D.
Museum Publications
"The Technical Aspects of Degas's Art": Metropolitan Museum Journal, v. 4 (1971)
Splendid Legacy: The Havemeyer Collection
Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art
French Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 3, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed
European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born before 1865: A Summary Catalogue
Degas: The Artist's Mind
Degas, 1834–1917
Dance: A Very Social History
A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
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