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Dance Foyer at the Opera
Dance Foyer at the OperaOil on canvas, 1872 Dance Foyer at the Opera is a result of Degas’ studies of Japanese prints. He adopted the asymmetrical grouping shown in this work, where the central area, which would traditionally have been the focal point of the painting, is empty, as though in anticipation of the dancer’s progress into it. Shown at Durand-Ruel’s gallery in London in 1872, it excited the English critic Sidney Collin to write: “It is a scheme of various whites, gauzes and muslins, fluttering round the apartment, and the ballet-master in white ducks and jacket in the middle; and all the little shifts of indoor light and color, all the movements of the girls in rest and strained exercise, expressed with the most perfect precision of drawing and delicacy of color, and without a shadow of a shade of that sentiment which is ordinarily implied by a picture having the ballet for its subject”. Degas’ lifelong devotion to the ballet as an artistic subject began at about this time, and Dance Foyer at the Opera was certainly his earliest large-scale work in the genre. Here he shows a single moment at a rehearsal in the Paris Opera’s practice rooms in the rue Le Peletier. The dancer is taking up her position, the master prepares to call out his instructions, and a fiddler sits ready to provide the necessary accompaniment. Some dancers watch; others go about their business; through the open door, a glimpse of tulle and a leg stretched out parallel to the principle dancer’s reveals that the instant ‘snapshot’ look of the painting is an illusion. The noble proportions of the room, the sharp drawing and the soft, harmonious, light-filled atmosphere give the picture a calm, classic quality. Own An Original Re-Creation
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Hand-painted in oils by a professional artist
