Ballet at the Paris Opéra

This is a wide, low rectangle, about 70 centimeters across and half that tall, showing young dancers on a stage. Edgar Degas made it in 1877 with pastel, which is a soft chalk-like colored stick, over a monotype, a kind of one-off print made by transferring a painted or inked image onto paper. The view is from the orchestra pit, where the musicians sit below the stage. Looking up from there, we see the dancers at a slight distance, scattered across the space, with the whole scene feeling caught in a passing moment.

Start in the middle, where one dancer stands in fifth position, a classical pose with the feet tightly crossed, rising en pointe, which means balanced on the tips of her toes. Then look at the other dancers around her. They are placed loosely, not in neat rows, and their hair hangs free. That suggests a rehearsal, not a performance. Finally, look to the edge of the picture, where the necks of the double basses, large string instruments, push into the dancers' space. Degas lets them intrude, as if we were really sitting there.

Degas was one of the most innovative artists of the nineteenth century, and he often combined traditional techniques in unusual ways. Here he joined monotype, which was rarely used in his day, with pastel, a fragile medium. This work was made on one of the widest monotype plates he ever used. The wide format lets the stage stretch out sideways. Degas also likes cropped forms, where figures are cut off by the edge, and odd vantage points. Both make the scene feel immediate, as though we have just glanced at it.

Pastel has been described as the powder of butterfly wings. That suits a scene in which thin, young dancers become, on stage, visions of beauty as perfect and short-lived as butterflies. The setting also carries history. The Paris Opéra was the official school of the first state-supported ballet, the Académie Royale de Danse, created in 1661. Before you move on, look again at the soft, dusty texture of the colors around the central dancer, and think of that fragile, fleeting quality.