Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
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)
Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
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
Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
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
Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
Fig. 7. Edgar Degas, Notebook 24, p. 27 (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris).
Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
Fig. 8. Edgar Degas, Notebook 25, p. 29 (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris).
Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
Fig. 9. Edgar Degas, Two Dancers on a Stage, ca. 1874, oil on canvas, 61.5 x 46 cm (Courtauld Gallery, London).
Artwork Details
Use your arrow keys to navigate the tabs below, and your tab key to choose an item
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
The British painter Walter Sickert acquired the picture at the estate sale of Captain Henry Hill of Brighton at Christie’s London in 1889. When Sickert’s wife lent it to the New English Art Club two years later, the critic D. S. MacColl (December 5, 1891) called it "a demonstration against all pedantry of technique; begun in black-and-white for an illustrated paper, it has somehow been transformed into colour by what may, for aught one can tell, be a mixture of body-colour, pastel, and oils; the effect is obtained, and that is the only law." MacColl found the technique of less interest than the effect it created, but, for Degas, the process was intimately connected to the final effect.
The Series of Three Rehearsal Onstage Scenes: The camaïeu version of the subject (fig. 1) appeared in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. Boggs and Maheux (1992) suggested that Degas submitted the camaïeu to the Illustrated London News because of its resemblance to the monochrome colors of the etching format. Grisaille (grey-toned) paintings, similar to the Orsay camaïeu, typically were employed by painters for this purpose. (The work is Degas’s only monochrome painting [Pantazzi 1988].) Similarly, Richard Kendall’s (1985) early thoughts on the series had the Orsay picture first because of his theory of the artist moving through a process from black-and-white tonalism to color. However, Moore, a close friend to Degas from at least 1875 on, discussed the aftermath of Degas’s rejection from the publication in such specific terms that it seems hard to believe that he would have confused the two canvases. Moore recounted in The Speaker (1891): "upon having his drawing returned to him Degas began painting upon it in oil, very thinly—so thinly that the original drawing is still visible through the paint." One has the impression that Moore may even have witnessed this unorthodox transformation of the canvas. Degas’s friend Sickert also noted later (1932) that it was the same work that had been submitted to the Illustrated London News, rejected by their rectory circulation, and painted in oil afterwards.
A key part of Degas’s process was streamlining the composition between the three versions of the scene. The Met’s pastel version includes only one bass scroll, focuses even less on the set design, and reduces the number of figures at both left and right waiting in the wings. By the time the artist took up the monochrome version, he included no scenery at right and reduced the number of men in the scene to the single top-hatted gentleman who focuses intensely on the dancers. Pentimenti in the Orsay version, however, reveal traces of the original design, with the ballet master and second onlooker still visible to those who search for them. Once using a larger format, Degas was able to include the curve of the front of the stage (see Pickvance 1963). For more on the order of the three versions, see "Technical Notes" below.
Degas based the central figure in Ballet Rehearsal (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City) on that of the Rehearsal series as well as the Courtauld picture, but reverses her pose. The artist also completed his first monotype, The Ballet Master (ca. 1876, National Gallery of Art, Washington), after the Kansas City picture.
Technical Notes: The most frequently exhibited and illustrated of his dance pictures before 1900, this painting has been called "technically unique" in Degas’s oeuvre (Pickvance 1963). In truth, his use of mixed media was more than a touch unorthodox; for 1874, it was downright revolutionary. The idea of taking one’s pen-and-ink drawing and laying different types of paint and pastel on top of it is something we might expect of artists working a century later who have been known to experiment with various media, such as Jasper Johns (American, b. 1930). Johns, himself, has admired Degas’s work and was inspired by his predecessor’s playful approach to mixed media, particularly when following in Degas’s footsteps to explore monotype prints. The incorporation of the solvent turpentine to thin out oil paint, in a technique known as peinture à l’essence, was first explored in oil studies during the Renaissance but it was revived and extended to final paintings by Degas. (See Denis Rouart, Degas: A la recherche de sa technique, Paris, 1945, pp. 14–15.) The relatively early investigations into mixed media in this picture only emboldened Degas to push further by adding pastel to his monotypes of the 1890s and by using such found objects as human hair, silk and linen ribbon, a cotton faille bodice, cotton and silk tutu, and linen slippers in his wax sculpture Little Dancer, Fourteen Years Old (1878–81, National Gallery of Art, Washington). Before he risked exhibiting the Little Dancer at the sixth Impressionist exhibition in 1881, Degas’s experimental combination of media in Rehearsal of the Ballet Onstage served as an artist’s private exploration of mixing media. (The Little Dancer was the only sculpture he would exhibit in his lifetime and the source of much criticism in the press.) Perhaps because of this radical rumination on media, Degas does not appear to have exhibited this version of the subject in Paris until the third Impressionist exhibition in 1877, choosing to test the waters first by showing it abroad at the Deschamps Gallery in London in 1876. (For more on Degas’s experiments in mixed media, see Ann Hoenigswald and Kimberly A. Jones, "’All the Vocabularies of Painting’: Adaptation and Experimentation, 1878–1879," Degas/Cassatt, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2014, pp. 119–21.)
As reported in Pantazzi (1988), the Degas Pastel Project, led by Anne Maheux and Peter Zegers at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, examined closely the extensive underdrawing partially visible to the naked eye in The Met’s two Rehearsal works on paper mounted on canvas. It was because of the "uncommon precision" of the ink drawing under the present version that Pantazzi subscribed to the idea that the picture was initially the model for the notional print. He noted that the scenery and figures are carefully outlined and that closely hatched lines indicated values. When examined under infrared light, even more details came to the fore; for example, the ballet master’s fingernails are visible. In The Met’s pastel version, by contrast, the ink drawing includes only ruled architectural outlines and "quite freely, even hesitantly, drawn" outlines of the two dancers at right and little shading. Pantazzi concluded that the ink drawing under The Met’s pastel version was actually an earlier attempt at the composition than the ink drawing under the present painting because of the more cursory underdrawing in the pastel version and because of changes to one figure between the two drawings. The central dancer en pointe in the pastel version was originally drawn with her right arm raised, as in a charcoal drawing (III:115.1), but was corrected in ink to a lowered-arm pose. In the present version, by contrast, her arm appears in that lowered pose with no correction.
Given these discoveries, Pantazzi concluded that the order of creation was: the ink drawing under the pastel, the ink drawing under this picture, the camaïeu (1873–74), this picture reworked in color (perhaps 1874), and the final pastel (perhaps 1874). He also noted that the Degas Pastel Project had found that some areas were drawn over in ink after paint had been applied, a technique that "appears to be unique in Degas’s work."
Jane R. Becker 2016
Inscription: Signed (upper left): Degas
[Charles W. Deschamps, London, by 1876; sent to him by the artist before April 1876; sold to Hill]; Captain Henry Hill, Brighton (by 1876–until d. 1882; his estate, 1882–89; his estate sale, Christie's, London, May 25, 1889, no. 29, as "A Rehearsal," for 66 gns. to Sickert); Walter Richard Sickert, London (from 1889; given to Cobden-Sickert); his second wife, Ellen Cobden-Sickert, London (until 1902; left in the care of her sister, Mrs. T. Fisher-Unwin, by summer 1898; deposited by Cobden-Sickert on January 4, 1902 with Durand-Ruel, Paris; deposit no. 10185; returned to her on January 25, 1902 in the care of Boussod, Valadon; sold on January 31, 1902 for Fr 75,373 to Boussod, Valadon); [Boussod, Valadon & Cie, Paris, 1902; stock no. 27473; sold on February 7, 1902, for Fr 82,845, to Havemeyer]; Mr. and Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, New York (1902–his d. 1907); Mrs. H. O. (Louisine W.) Havemeyer, New York (1907–d. 1929); her son, Horace Havemeyer, New York (1929; cat., 1931, pp. 122–23, ill.)
London. Deschamps Gallery. "Twelfth Exhibition of Pictures by Modern French Artists," Spring 1876, no. 130 (as "The Rehearsal") [see Sterling and Salinger 1967].
London. International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers. "Exhibition of International Art," April 26–September 22, 1898, no. 116 (as "Dancers," lent by Mrs. Unwin).
New York. M. Knoedler & Co. "Loan Exhibition of Masterpieces by Old and Modern Painters," April 6–24, 1915, no. 38 (as "The Ballet Rehearsal," possibly this picture or not in catalogue).
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The H. O. Havemeyer Collection," March 10–November 2, 1930, no. 58 [2nd ed., 1958, no. 111].
Cleveland Museum of Art. "Works by Edgar Degas," February 5–March 9, 1947, no. 23.
New York. Wildenstein. "A Loan Exhibition of Degas," April 7–May 14, 1949, no. 36.
Philadelphia Museum of Art. "Diamond Jubilee Exhibition: Masterpieces of Painting," November 4, 1950–February 11, 1951, no. 73.
Kansas City, Mo. William Rockhill Nelson Gallery. "Twentieth Anniversary Exhibition: 19th and 20th Century French Paintings," December 11–28, 1953, no catalogue?
Los Angeles County Museum. "An Exhibition of Works by Edgar Hilaire Germain Degas, 1834–1917," March 1958, no. 26.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Degas in the Metropolitan," February 26–September 4, 1977, no. 13 (of paintings).
Paris. Galeries nationales du Grand Palais. "Degas," February 9–May 16, 1988, no. 124.
Ottawa. National Gallery of Canada. "Degas," June 16–August 28, 1988, no. 124.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Degas," September 27, 1988–January 8, 1989, no. 124.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Splendid Legacy: The Havemeyer Collection," March 27–June 20, 1993, no. A212.
Edgar Degas. Letter to Charles Deschamps. early 1874 [published in French and English in Reff 2020, letter no. 38], writes that he has reworked a variation of one of the two paintings where a bench is cut off in the foreground, probably referring to this picture and The Met 29.100.39.
Alice Meynell. "A Brighton Treasure-House: The Hill Collection." Magazine of Art 5 (1882), p. 82, describes it among Hill's collection of Degas ballet pictures, "which assuredly have no charm of beauty wherewith to fascinate us".
Walter Richard Sickert. Letter to Jacques-Emile Blanche. [Fall 1889] [see Reff 2020], states that he would like to show Blanche the Degas he bought.
George Moore. "Degas: The Painter of Modern Life." Magazine of Art 13 (October 1890), ill. p. 420, as "A Rehearsal"; on p. 423 describes "pictures begun in water-colour, continued in gouache, and afterwards completed in oils, and if the picture be examined carefully it will be found that the finishing hand has been given with pen and ink," which may be a reference to this picture [see Ref. Reff 1971].
Lucien Pissarro. Letter to Camille Pissarro. May 1891 [published in "The Letters of Lucien to Camille Pissarro, 1883–1903," ed. Anne Thorold, 1993, p. 212], describes seeing a Degas oil painting in Sickert's home, mentioning that it was purchased from a famous sale, possibly this picture [see Ref. Cooper 1954].
G[eorge]. M[oore]. "The New English Art Club." The Speaker (December 5, 1891), p. 677, recounts its rejection by the "Illustrated London News" because the subject matter was considered improper for its rectory circulation; notes that "upon having his drawing returned to him Degas began painting upon it in oil, very thinly—so thinly that the original drawing is still visible through the paint".
D. S. M[acColl]. "The New English Art Club." The Spectator (December 5, 1891), p. 809, calls it "a demonstration against all pedantry of technique; begun in black-and-white for an illustrated paper, it has somehow been transformed into colour by what may, for aught one can tell, be a mixture of body-colour, pastel, and oils; the effect is obtained, and that is the only law".
Julius Meier-Graefe. Degas. Munich, 1920, pp. 45–46 [English ed., 1923, pp. 60–61], dates it possibly just before the grisaille version; calls the artist's unusual angle of vision an "apparently haphazard choice".
Paul Jamot. Degas. Paris, 1924, pp. 125, 142–43, reproduces the pastel version (MMA 29.100.39) but describes this picture in the entry for plate 36; dates it about 1874; calls it a variant of the grisaille and asserts that it is difficult to determine which version came first; says that no. 61 in the 3rd Impressionist exhibition [Exh. Paris 1877] could have been this picture, but considers it more likely to have been the grisaille.
Harry B. Wehle. "The Exhibition of the H. O. Havemeyer Collection." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 25 (March 1930), p. 55.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection: Catalogue of Paintings, Prints, Sculpture and Objects of Art. n.p., 1931, pp. 122–23, ill., dates it about 1874–75.
Walter Richard Sickert. "The Way of a Painter." Twentieth Century Art. Exh. cat., Leicester Galleries. London, 1932 [repr. in "A Free House! or the Artist as Craftsman: Being the Writings of Walter Richard Sickert," ed. Osbert Sitwell, 1947, p. 294], calls it "perhaps the most famous stage-rehearsal scene of a ballet by Degas" and remarks that it was painted over a pen-and-ink drawing rejected by the "Illustrated London News" for fear of offending its rectory circulation.
E. Tietze-Conrat. "What Degas Learned from Mantegna." Gazette des beaux-arts, 6th ser., 26 (July–December 1944), p. 420, n. 8, compares Degas's "'Rehearsal' in the Metropolitan Museum," probably this one, to the right side of Mantegna's "Transport of the Body of St. Christopher" in the Ovetari chapel in Padua.
Hans Huth. "Impressionism Comes to America." Gazette des beaux-arts, 6th ser., 29 (April 1946), p. 239 n. 22, suggests erroneously that it was exhibited in 1886 in New York at the American Art Association and the National Academy of Design.
Louise Burroughs. "Notes." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 4 (January 1946), unpaginated, ill. on cover (color detail) and inside cover, refers to the grisaille as the earliest of the three versions.
Fiske Kimball and Lionello Venturi. Great Paintings in America. New York, 1948, pp. 182–83, no. 84, ill. (color), call it the second of the three versions, dating all three to 1874.
Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 28.
Douglas Cooper. The Courtauld Collection. London, 1954, pp. 61–62, notes that Lucien Pissarro saw this picture hanging in Sickert's home [see Ref. Pissarro 1891].
Pierre Cabanne. Edgar Degas. Paris, [1957], pp. 108, 112–13, 130, no. 66, pl. 66 [English ed., 1958, pp. 108–9, under no. 36, pp. 113, 132, no. 66, pl. 66], dates it 1875.
Louisine W. Havemeyer. Sixteen to Sixty: Memoirs of a Collector. New York, 1961, pp. 259–60, misidentifies the medium of this picture as gouache.
Ronald Pickvance. "Henry Hill: An Untypical Victorian Collector." Apollo 76 (December 1962), p. 791, fig. 3, states that Hill acquired this painting from Durand-Ruel by 1876.
Ronald Pickvance. "Degas's Dancers: 1872–6." Burlington Magazine 105 (June 1963), pp. 259–60, 263–66, fig. 21, dates it 1873 and considers it the earliest of the three versions; states that Degas originally created this picture as a pen and ink drawing, which was rejected for submission to the "Illustrated London News" and later added to in a manner "technically unique in Degas's oeuvre"; calls the grisaille version a radically modified variant of this one, dated before April 1874, and the pastel version a copy of the original ink design, dated no later than 1874; also relates the Courtauld painting "Two Dancers on a Stage" (Lemoisne no. 425) to this composition, calling all four related pictures "a closely self-contained group".
Jean Sutherland Boggs. Drawings by Degas. Exh. cat., City Art Museum of Saint Louis. St. Louis, 1966, p. 114, under no. 70.
Charles Sterling and Margaretta M. Salinger. French Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 3, XIX–XX Centuries. New York, 1967, pp. 73–76, ill., accept Pickvance's [Ref. 1963] date of 1873–74 for all three versions and consider this picture the earliest of the three.
Lillian Browse. "Degas's Grand Passion." Apollo 85 (February 1967), p. 109, fig. 4, refers to it as one of the two later canvases among the three versions; comments on the liberties Degas has taken with the subject for the sake of the composition.
Theodore Reff. "An Exhibition of Drawings by Degas." Art Quarterly 30, no. 3–4 (1967), p. 261.
Fiorella Minervino inL'opera completa di Degas. Milan, 1970, p. 108, no. 466, ill., dates it 1873–74.
Theodore Reff. "Degas' Sculpture, 1880–1884." Art Quarterly 33, no. 3 (1970), pp. 294, 298 n. 73, asserts that although this picture has been cited as a source for the dancer motif on a carved wooden box by Gauguin (1884; Collection Halfdan Nobel Roede, Oslo), the grisaille version was more likely seen by Gauguin.
Theodore Reff. "The Technical Aspects of Degas's Art." Metropolitan Museum Journal 4 (1971), p. 151, fig. 17 (detail), calls Moore's [see Ref. 1890] description of Degas pictures executed in watercolor, gouache, oil, and pen and ink "obviously apropros" this painting, and cites it as an example of early critical notice of Degas' unconventional use of mixed media.
Alice Bellony-Rewald. The Lost World of the Impressionists. London, 1976, ill. p. 167, dates it 1878–79.
Theodore Reff. Degas, The Artist's Mind. [New York], 1976, pp. 284–85, fig. 200 (detail), dates it about 1873.
Theodore Reff. The Notebooks of Edgar Degas: A Catalogue of the Thirty-Eight Notebooks in the Bibliothèque Nationale and Other Collections. Oxford, 1976, vol. 1, p. 7 n. 2, pp. 9, 21, 115 (notebook 22, p. 203), pp. 119–20 (notebook 24, pp. 26–27), dates it 1873; catalogues studies for this picture and illustrates one of them [vol. 2, Nb. 24, p. 27].
Denys Sutton. Walter Sickert: A Biography. London, 1976, pp. 61, 71, 111–12, quotes from Sickert's letter to Jacques-Emile Blanche after he bought this picture in 1889: "I find more & more, in half a sentence that Degas has said, guidance for years of work," and from a [1902] letter in which he describes having sold this picture to an American for £3,000.
Charles S. Moffett. Degas: Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1979, p. 12, colorpl. 20, dates it 1873–74 in the text and about 1873 in the caption.
Ian Dunlop. Degas. New York, 1979, pp. 113, 117, 202, pl. 102, dates it 1873–74.
Keith Roberts. Degas. rev., enl. ed. [1st ed., 1976]. Oxford, 1982, unpaginated, under no. 17, fig. 21.
Ronald Pickvance. Edgar Degas: 1834–1917. Exh. cat., David Carritt. London, 1983, p. 4.
Roy McMullen. Degas: His Life, Times, and Work. Boston, 1984, pp. 218, 229, 361, 363.
George T. M. Shackelford. Degas: The Dancers. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1984, pp. 36–37, 44, 55, 127 n. 6, fig. 1.9, dates it about 1872.
Charles S. Moffett. Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1985, pp. 70–71, 74, 250, ill. (color), dates it about 1873, placing it first among the three versions.
Götz Adriani. Degas: Pastels, Oil Sketches, Drawings. Exh. cat., Kunsthalle Tübingen. New York, 1985, p. 362, under no. 93.
Anna Gruetzner. "Degas and George Moore: Some Observations about the Last Impressionist Exhibition." Degas 1834–1984. Ed. Richard Kendall. Manchester, 1985, p. 37, fig. 31, quotes from Moore's account ("The Speaker," December 5, 1891) of this picture's rejection by the Illustrated London News.
Richard Kendall inDegas, 1834–1984. Ed. Richard Kendall. Manchester, 1985, p. 24, fig. 31, calls the grisaille version a possible preliminary tonal study for the pen-and-ink underdrawing of this picture.
Frances Weitzenhoffer. The Havemeyers: Impressionism Comes to America. New York, 1986, p. 224, ill. (installation photograph of Exh. New York 1915).
Eunice Lipton. Looking into Degas: Uneasy Images of Women and Modern Life. Berkeley, 1986, p. 208 n. 29.
Richard R. Brettell inThe New Painting: Impressionism 1874–1886. Ed. Charles S. Moffett. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington. San Francisco, 1986, p. 204.
Hollis Clayson inThe New Painting: Impressionism 1874–1886. Ed. Charles S. Moffett. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington. San Francisco, 1986, p. 174, under no. 25.
Paul Tucker inThe New Painting: Impressionism 1874–1886. Ed. Charles S. Moffett. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington. San Francisco, 1986, p. 120, erroneously identifies it as no. 60 in the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874.
Dennis Farr and John House inImpressionist & Post-Impressionist Masterpieces: The Courtauld Collection. Exh. cat., Cleveland Museum of Art. New Haven, 1987, unpaginated, under nos. 7 and 8.
Alexandra R. Murphy in Rafael Fernandez and Alexandra R. Murphy. Degas in the Clark Collection. Exh. cat., Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, Mass., 1987, p. 11, fig. E, dates it about 1878.
Michael Pantazzi inDegas. Exh. cat., Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris. New York, 1988, pp. 225–32, 240, 242, 260, 391, 476, 494, no. 124, ill. (color), suggests a new sequence for the three versions: 1. the ink drawing underlying the pastel, 2. the ink drawing underlying this picture, 3. the grisaille, 1873–74, 4. this picture, reworked in color, perhaps 1874, and 5. the final pastel, perhaps 1874; calls it "technically the more curious" of the two MMA pictures and reports that in both compositions, certain areas in color were redrawn again in ink, a method of reworking that "appears to be unique in Degas's work"; notes that studies exist for almost every figure in the picture.
Richard Thomson. "The Degas Exhibition at the Grand Palais." Burlington Magazine 130 (April 1988), pp. 296, 298.
Anna Gruetzner Robins. "Degas and Sickert: Notes on Their Friendship." Burlington Magazine 130 (March 1988), pp. 226–27.
Richard Thomson. "The Degas Exhibition in Ottawa and New York." Burlington Magazine 131 (April 1989), pp. 293–94.
Henri Loyrette. Degas. Paris, 1991, p. 612.
Carol Armstrong. Odd Man Out: Readings of the Work and Reputation of Edgar Degas. Chicago, 1991, pp. 10, 38, 50, 60, 131, fig. 5, dates it 1876; discusses the "obsessive quality" of Degas's repetitions in the three versions of this picture.
Patrick Bade. Degas. London, 1991, pp. 84–85, 143, ill. (color).
Jean Sutherland Boggs and Anne Maheux. Degas Pastels. New York, 1992, p. 54, under no. 8, p. 171 n. 8–1, pp. 180–81, identify it as probably no. 60 in the 1st Impressionist exhibition and as no. 61 in the 3rd Impressionist exhibition.
Louisine W. Havemeyer. Sixteen to Sixty: Memoirs of a Collector. Ed. Susan Alyson Stein. 3rd ed. [1st ed. 1930, repr. 1961]. New York, 1993, pp. 257, 259–60, 337 n. 376, pp. 338–39 n. 387.
Susan Alyson Stein inSplendid Legacy: The Havemeyer Collection. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1993, pp. 232, 285, colorpl. 227, dates it "1874?".
Rebecca A. Rabinow inSplendid Legacy: The Havemeyer Collection. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1993, p. 95, fig. 12 (installation photograph of Exh. New York 1915), identifies it as either no. 38 or not in the catalogue of the 1915 New York exhibition.
Gretchen Wold inSplendid Legacy: The Havemeyer Collection. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1993, pp. 328–29, no. A212, ill.
Albert Kostenevich. Hidden Treasures Revealed: Impressionist Masterpieces and Other Important French Paintings Preserved by the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Exh. cat.New York, 1995, p. 64, suggests that "The Dancer" (about 1874; State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg) is related to this picture.
Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 452, ill.
Richard Kendall. Degas, Beyond Impressionism. Exh. cat., National Gallery. London, 1996, pp. 58–59, 308 n. 16.
Ruth Berson, ed. "Documentation: Volume I, Reviews and Volume II, Exhibited Works." The New Painting: Impressionism 1874–1886. San Francisco, 1996, vol. 2, p. 74, no. III-61, ill. p. 92, identifies it as possibly no. 61 in the 3rd Impressionist exhibition [Exh. Paris 1877].
Gary Tinterow and Asher Ethan Miller inThe Wrightsman Pictures. Ed. Everett Fahy. New York, 2005, pp. 402, 404 n. 3, note that Degas hoped James Tissot could help him sell this picture as a commercial illustration.
Anna Gruetzner Robins in Anna Gruetzner Robins and Richard Thomson. Degas, Sickert and Toulouse-Lautrec: London and Paris, 1870–1910. Exh. cat., Tate Britain. London, 2005, pp. 62, 65–66, 74, 79, 84, 184, 203–4.
Richard Thomson in Anna Gruetzner Robins and Richard Thomson. Degas, Sickert and Toulouse-Lautrec: London and Paris, 1870–1910. Exh. cat., Tate Britain. London, 2005, pp. 26, 29, fig. 9 (color), dates it about 1873–74; notes that Hill purchased this picture from Deschamps for 66 guineas and speculates that Hill "responded to these scenes of exercise and rehearsal as intriguing images of an unusual corner of contemporary life, or that they struck a chord in his sympathy for the strenuous lives of the urban worker".
Jill DeVonyar in Annette Dixon. The Dancer: Degas, Forain, Toulouse-Lautrec. Exh. cat., Portland Art Museum. Portland, Oreg., 2008, p. 223, fig. 14 (color).
Mary Morton and George T. M. Shackelford. Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter's Eye. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art. Washington, 2015, p. 19.
Roberta Crisci-Richardson. Mapping Degas: Real Spaces, Symbolic Spaces and Invented Spaces in the Life and Work of Edgar Degas (1834–1917). Newcastle upon Tyne, 2015, p. 238.
Lelia Packer Jennifer Sliwka. Monochrome: Painting in Black and White. Exh. cat., National Gallery. London, 2017, pp. 96, 217 n. 31, fig. 22 (color), call it "Ballet Rehearsal"; state that it is likely that the grisaille version was produced first, followed by this version, then "The Rehearsal Onstage" (ca. 1874, The Met, 29.100.39).
Ruth E. Iskin inMonographic Exhibitions and the History of Art. Ed. Maia Wellington Gahtan and Donatella Pegazzano. New York, 2018, fig. 2.1 (installation photo of New York 1915).
Samantha Small inThannhauser Collection: French Modernism at the Guggenheim. Ed. Megan Fontanella. New York, 2018, pp. 85–86, fig. 12.5 (color), compares it to his "Dancers in Green and Yellow" (ca. 1903, Guggenheim Museum, New York).
Theodore Reff, ed. The Letters of Edgar Degas.. By Edgar Degas. New York, 2020, vol. 1, p. 186 n. 3, p. 389 n. 4, p. 451 n. 2 (under letter no. 349); vol. 2, p. 277 n. 2, p. 293, n. 3; vol. 3, p. 355, states that it is probably one of the paintings referred to in Degas's letter to Charles Deschamps of early 1874; identifies it as the picture that Sickert mentions in an unpublished letter to Jacques-Emile Blanche of fall 1889.
Aimee Marcereau DeGalan inFrench Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan. Kansas City, 2021, unpaginated, fig. 3 (color) [https://doi.org/10.37764/78973.5.614.5407], compares it to "Rehearsal of the Ballet" (ca. 1876, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City).
The Met's Libraries and Research Centers provide unparalleled resources for research and welcome an international community of students and scholars.
The Met Collection API is where all makers, creators, researchers, and dreamers can connect to the most up-to-date data and public domain images for The Met collection. Open Access data and public domain images are available for unrestricted commercial and noncommercial use without permission or fee.
Feedback
We continue to research and examine historical and cultural context for objects in The Met collection. If you have comments or questions about this object record, please complete and submit this form. The Museum looks forward to receiving your comments.