Degas at the Opéra

July 20 – October 12, 2020
West Building, Ground Floor, Outer Tier

Edgar Degas, *The Curtain*, c. 1880, pastel over charcoal and monotype on laid paper mounted on board, sheet: 29 x 33.3 cm (11 7/16 x 13 1/8 in.), National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery.

An exuberant display of fecund imagination and keen observation, Edgar Degas’s renowned images of the Paris Opéra are among the most sophisticated and visually compelling works he ever created. Celebrating the 350th anniversary of the Opéra’s founding, Degas at the Opéra will present approximately 100 of the artist’s best-known and beloved works in a range of media, including paintings, pastels, drawings, prints, and sculpture. It will be accompanied by a fully illustrated exhibition catalog.

Degas (1834–1917) is celebrated as the painter of dancers, a subject that dominated his art for nearly four decades. Although there have been many exhibitions celebrating his love of the ballet, this will be the first to consider his enduring fascination with the opéra. A music lover and regular visitor to performances, Degas explored both the public spaces of the Paris Opéra—auditorium, stage, and boxes—as well as more private ones, including dance studios and backstage. He was friends with many of the people he depicted in his paintings, from dancers, singers, and orchestra musicians to the dark-suited subscribers.

The Opéra also fueled some of Degas’s most daring technical innovations, including his first monotype, The Ballet Master (c. 1876), and his wax statue Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (1881), which revolutionized sculpture.

The exhibition is curated by Degas expert Henri Loyrette with Kimberly A. Jones, curator of 19th-century French paintings, National Gallery of Art; Leïla Jarbouai, graphic arts curator, Musée d'Orsay; and Marine Kisiel, conseillère scientifique, Institut national d'histoire de l'art; former curator, Musée d'Orsay.

Degas at the Opera

Edgar Degas, Portrait of Eugénie Fiocre a propos of the Ballet “La Source,” 1867–1868, oil on canvas, Brooklyn Museum, Gift of James H. Post, A. Augustus Healy, and John T. Underwood, 1921, 21.111. Photo: Brooklyn Museum

Degas at the Opera

Edgar Degas, The Ballet from "Robert Le Diable," 1871–1872, oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929, 29.100.552. Image courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Degas at the Opera

Edgar Degas, The Song Rehearsal, c. 1872, oil on canvas, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, House Collection, Bequest of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss, 1940. Photo © Dumbarton Oaks, Washington

Degas at the Opera

Edgar Degas, The Orchestra of the Opéra, 1870, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d'Orsay)/Hervé Lewandowski

A dimly lit ballet studio is filled with about two dozen young dancers tying on their shoes, stretching, or practicing en pointe in this horizontal painting. The girls all wear dance costumes with knee length tutus, tight bodices, and belts in canary yellow, rose pink, or royal blue. The girls all have brown or dark blond hair. The room seems to be mostly lit from windows on the wall opposite us so some of the girls’ faces are in shadow, but all appear to have light skin. Starting from the left, two dancers are visible from the waist down as they descend a spiral staircase that rises along the left edge of the canvas and off the top. To our left of center is a knot of several dancers, two of whom stand on their toes en pointe, with arms raised. Further right and closest to us, four dancers cluster around a mahogany-brown bench. Rose-pink ballet slippers are piled next to a seated dancer wearing a scarlet-red jacket over her costume. Her head is turned to our right, looking at the girl standing next to her. On the other side of the bench, another dancer bends over to reach her feet, presumably tying on her slippers. The fourth stands on the far right with her back to us, her head turned to our left to look back at the central group. More dancers practice in a room beyond, seen through a wide, squared opening in the upper right of the composition. The room we seem to be in has dark olive-green walls and the room beyond has brighter, parchment-yellow walls. The faces and some details of the costume are loosely painted so their features are indistinct. The artist signed the painting in the lower right corner, “Degas.”

Degas at the Opera

Edgar Degas, The Dance Class, c. 1873, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection), 2014.79.710

Degas at the Opera

Edgar Degas, The Dance Class, begun 1873, completed 1875–1876, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, Bequest of Isaac de Camondo, 1911. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d'Orsay)/Hervé Lewandowski

We look down onto a shadowy stage with a ballerina and a man in this black and white work on paper. The man stands in the lower left corner of the composition wearing a knee-length jacket and resting his wrists on a tall stick in front of his body. Though his face and head are lost in deep shadow, it seems that he looks toward the ballerina to our right. Up on her toes en pointe, her body faces us but her arms are raised and angled toward the upper left corner of the composition. She turns her upper torso and head to gaze in the direction of her hands. Lighting comes from the front edge of the curving stage and illuminates the man’s pants and undersides of his arms, the dancer’s legs, tutu, and face, and the front part of the stage. The space behind the people is lost in shadow but is marked by strokes and smudges. In the upper left corner the names of the artists are scratched onto the ink that had coated the surface of the printing plate: “Lepic” and “Degas.”

Degas at the Opera

Edgar Degas, Vicomte Ludovic Lepic, The Ballet Master, c. 1876, monotype (black ink) heightened and corrected with white chalk or wash on laid paper, Rosenwald Collection, 1964.8.1782

Degas at the Opera

Edgar Degas, The Ballet Rehearsal on Stage, 1874, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, Bequest of Isaac de Camondo, 1911. Photo © Musée d'Orsay), Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Patrice Schmidt

Degas at the Opera

Edgar Degas, Dancer with a Bouquet Curtseying on Stage, 1878, pastel on wove paper mounted on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, Bequest of Isaac de Camondo, 1911. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d'Orsay)/Hervé Lewandowski

At least three men in black suits, one wearing a top hat, and a ballerina wearing a white costume, all stand among a theater set with a painted, partially raised backdrop across the background in this nearly square pastel over a monotype print on paper. The scene is loosely drawn so many details are difficult to make out. The man we see the most of is shown from the ankles up, standing near the lower right corner of the composition. He faces away from us with his hands in his pockets. The ballerina stands facing our right next to him, and she is cut off by the right edge of the composition. She has pale skin and dark hair, and a black ribbon is tied around her neck. She wears a knee-length white tutu with a crimson-red sash tied around the waist of the white bodice. One pink leg raised parallel to the ground disappears behind the man in black. The stage beneath them is streaked with sand brown and pale gray. A tree trunk and branches leans into the scene from the upper right corner. Part of a stage set painted with mostly straw yellow with touches of mint green screens off the view to our left. Two sets of black suit pants show that a pair of men stand behind it, facing the back of the stage. One of them rests his hand on a cane. The backdrop across the back is painted with greenery below a blue sky. In a gap between the lower edge of the backdrop and the stage, about ten pairs of legs, clad either in pink stockings with white shoes or brown stockings with yellow shoes, are visible from the thighs down. One more pair of black, trouser-covered legs stand with feet planted at hip width, to our right. The artist signed the work in black letters near the lower left corner, “Degas.”

Degas at the Opera

Edgar Degas, The Curtain, c. 1880, pastel over charcoal and monotype on laid paper mounted on board, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 2006.128.16

Degas at the Opera

Edgar Degas, Study of a Theater Box, 1880, pastel and oil on board laid down on canvas, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Lewis Collection, 377-2014. Photo © The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Albert Sanchez, photographer

A long, brightly lit room is filled with at least nine young ballerinas in robin’s egg-blue dance costumes and pale pink shoes in this wide, horizontal painting. They all have light skin and brown or dark blond hair. The studio is lit from the left, and more light pours in through two windows toward the back. The wall closest to us is mint green with brown wainscoting covering the lower half, and a small mirror hanging a short distance down the wall. The walls of the space farther from us and the scuffed, worn floor are both painted with tan layered with washes of moss green and denim blue. A dancer in the lower left faces us and sits near a cello lying on the floor. The instrument’s curved upper body and neck emerge from the tutu near her left hip, on our right. She leans forward with her right arm, on our left, draped across her lap, and she rests her head on the other hand, propped up on her elbow. We look slightly down on her so only see the top of her head and the point of her nose. She wears a red jacket with her ice-blue, knee-length tutu spread around her. Her splayed feet are cropped by the bottom edge of the canvas. In the center are two dancers, one seated and the other standing. The seated girl is perched on a wooden chair with the back of her tutu draped over its top. She also wears a petal-pink jacket dotted with darker mauve. She gazes at the girl in front of her. That girl stands with her back to us, bowing her head slightly as she adjusts the bow of her emerald-green belt at the small of her back. At least six more dancers sit or stand along the far wall, in the upper right corner of the composition. One looks down at her tutu spread wide between her hands, and another holds a canary-yellow fan up to her face. The features of this group are loosely painted, making them indistinct. The artist signed the lower right, “Degas.”

Degas at the Opera

Edgar Degas, The Dance Lesson, c. 1879, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1995.47.6

Degas at the Opera

Edgar Degas, Dancers, 1879, gouache, oil pastel, and oil paint on silk, Tacoma Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. W. Hilding Lindberg, 1983.1.8. Photo: Duncan Price

Degas at the Opera

Edgar Degas, Three Nude Dancers Executing Arabesques, c. 1892–1895, charcoal on paper mounted on board, Bueil & Ract‑Madoux Collection, Paris. Photo: Jean-Louis Losi, Paris

Degas at the Opera

Edgar Degas, Pauline and Virginie Conversing with Admirers, c. 1876–1877, monotype (black ink) on India paper, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Bequest of Meta and Paul J. Sachs, 1965. Photo: © President and Fellows of Harvard College

Sculpted with rich brown wax, a young ballerina stands with her arms straight, hands clasped behind her back, and one foot in front of the other on a square wooden base. Her body is angled to our left in this photograph. Both feet are splayed outward, and her right foot is placed far in front of her left. Bangs cover her forehead, and she has a heart-shaped, upturned face with a squat nose and slightly pursed lips. Her heavy-lidded eyes are nearly closed and her hair is pulled back and tied with a wide, cream-white ribbon. She wears a fabric costume with a sleeveless, gold-colored bodice, a gray tulle skirt, and ballet slippers. Her body is sculpted from dark brown wax, and a layer of wax covers her hair, bodice, and ballet slippers.

Degas at the Opera

Edgar Degas, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, 1878-1881, pigmented beeswax, clay, metal armature, rope, paintbrushes, human hair, silk and linen ribbon, cotton faille bodice, cotton and silk tutu, linen slippers, on wooden base, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1999.80.28

Degas at the Opera

Edgar Degas, Dance Examination, 1880, pastel on paper, Lent by the Denver Art Museum, 1941.6. Photo: akg-images

Organization: Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Musées d'Orsay et de l'Orangerie, Paris

Sponsors: BP America is proud to be a sponsor of this Washington, DC, exhibition as part of its support for the arts in the United States. Adrienne Arsht also kindly provided a leadership gift for this exhibition. Additional funding is provided by Jacqueline B. Mars and The Exhibition Circle of the National Gallery of Art. The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Hashtag: #DegasOpera

Other venues: Musée d'Orsay, Paris, September 24, 2019–January 19, 2020

Degas at the Opéra Virtual Tour

Exhibition Feature
Degas's Opéra

Degas, Edgar: French, 1834 - 1917

Gallery Talks
Attend staff led gallery talks.
See upcoming talks and lectures related to this exhibition.

Lecture
Introduction to the Exhibition: Degas at the Opéra
March 8, 2:00 p.m.
East Building Auditorium

Concert
Agora Dance with Sound Impact (canceled)
Backstage at the Opera
March 15, 3:30 p.m.
West Building, West Garden Court

Film
The Paris Opéra (original title L'Opéra)
April 4, 11:00 a.m.
April 25, 2:00 p.m.
May 23, 24, 2:00 p.m.
East Building Auditorium