Lessons and rehearsal

Edgar Degas painted this rehearsal room in 1879, during a career he spent almost obsessively drawn to the world of ballet. Young dancers scatter across the studio, some warming up at the barre, others fixing their skirts or standing idle while they wait. Tall arched windows let daylight spill across the floor, bathing the whole room in cool grays and faded blues. Instead of the drama of a stage performance, we get the quiet reality behind it: the stretching, the pauses, the plain routine of a working day.

Ballerinas became something like a lifelong subject for Degas, and he wandered back to their practice halls over and over. His compositions set him apart from other painters of his time. He liked to slice figures off at the edges of the canvas or arrange them at unexpected angles, giving the effect of a candid photograph snapped when no one was looking. This trick came partly from his interest in photography and Japanese prints, both fresh and fashionable in the Paris of his day. The painting carries a soft, unhurried honesty, as though we slipped through the door and glimpsed these dancers going about an ordinary afternoon.