Recently, we visited the Burrell Collection in Scotland. It is a collection of over 9,000 art objects, including tapestries, stained glass, medieval treasures and paintings by Cezanne, Manet and Degas.
It was here, at the Burrell Collection museum, that we had the opportunity to see one of the first Edgar Degas ballerina paintings – The Ballet Rehearsal.
It is classic Impressionism, capturing a fleeting moment with visible brushstrokes and dashes of rich colour. Its ephemeral nature has caused many an art critic to describe it as a sketch rather than a painting.
Degas often worked from sketches and memory rather than from real life. He sets a harsh contrast between the grimy grey backdrop and the beauty of the dancers’ costumes; the brilliant white tutus and the partnering theme material above.
The central figure (sitting a third of the way in and a third down) has a pink partnering theme and the white from the footlights captures the momentary beauty of this ethereal figure.
This was the first of Degas’ ballet paintings, a subject he would continue for the rest of his life. It appeared at the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris in April 1874. The painting caught the eye of many a fellow painter. Giuseppe De Nittis wrote to a friend about it: “I can tell you it was extremely beautiful: the muslin costumes were so diaphanous, and the movements so true to life that it has to be seen to be believed; it is just impossible to describe”. De Nittis describes it as a drawing – as many art critics do – as Degas used the thinnest of stokes on the tutus to create ethereal beauty amid the chiaroscuro lighting of the footlights.
Rather than a traditional composition, you feel as if you have stumbled into a ballet class. The ballet master is almost hidden behind the seamstress, bathed in reflected footlight. Half the scene is obscured by a spiral staircase and we can only glimpse the feet of many of the dancers.
We look down on the scene, slightly from above. The dancers drift off into the grime of the far wall and seem to submerge and coalesce with it. The third row of dancers is actually part of the wall as there is no real space for them within the room.
The looping black marks on the floor look like a uniform impression of the shadows cast by the dancers on the floor. It is a dirty studio and the vivid beauty of the dancers’ tutus and partnering overskirts seems completely out of place in such a tawdry room. The little girl by the seamstress hugs her shawl around her shoulders in what must be a chilly studio. The seamstress herself has a big checkered blanket around her shoulders as she focuses on fixing a dancer’s underskirt.
It is as if this Edgar Degas ballerina painting is showing us that the practice halls are a world away from the Palais Garnier where the real performance takes place. Practising ‘battement’ again and again in the tawdry chill of the dank studio.
This painting was bought by Vincent Van Gogh’s art dealing brother Theo in 1888 for 5,220 francs (about £500) from fellow dealer Georges Petit, before selling it on just a few weeks later for 8,000 francs. In July 1926, William Burrell bought the painting for £6,500 (£500,000 in today’s money)
