The Rehearsal

This is one of Degas’s earliest paintings of dancers, a subject which he depicted in many media throughout his career. A close look at this canvas reveals a grid underneath the paint layer that he used as part of the preparatory process to record preliminary ideas. Degas later reworked this painting, taking out a stairwell and repositioning some of the figures to add to the rhythmic line of the rehearsing dancers. When Edmond de Goncourt, the renowned artist, critic, and writer, visited Degas’s studio in 1874, he wrote: “After a great many essays and experiments and trial shoots in all directions, he has fallen in love with modern life, and out of all the subjects of modern life he has chosen washerwomen and ballet dancers. . . . It is a world of pink and white, of female flesh in lawn and gauze, the most delightful of pretexts for using pale, soft tints.”