Edgar Degas's Rehearsal Before The Ballet

In 1877, Edgar Degas painted multiple oil paintings of ballerinas and one, the Rehearsal Before the Ballet, can be found in George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum in Springfield, Massachusetts. Degas paints the backstage moments for the ballerinas before they enter the stage for a performance. The legs and feet of seven ballerinas create the curving movement across the composition of the scene. In the foreground, an older ballerina has been cropped off in the right corner with her head down and her hands on her hips. Her large yellow tutu overlaps a dancer who is in the act of performing a jump with her arms swinging downwards towards the next dancer behind her. The next young female balances on one foot and extends her arms diagonally back towards two other dancers practicing a duet together behind the

In Rehearsal Before the Ballet, Degas uses a split complementary color scheme with monotonous orange-yellows, blue-violets, and greens to express only the figures and their movements. Degas is more interested in painting the actions of the dancing girls by pushing the paint around and layering blotches of color with swift brush movements against the canvas. For example, the only distinction of one of the dancer’s arms is a swoosh of blue-violet paint as she leaps into the air. The movement and texture of color flatten the painting because the figures are pushed up to the surface of the picture plane. Degas does give a sense of depth with the size of the figures decreasing the further they overlap each other; however, the representation of space is denied. There is no strong depiction of perspective and space is only suggested through the overlapping forms. A detailed background is also ignored, and only expansive shapes of solid color surrounding the figures indicate a wall that separates the dancers on stage and behind the