The Rehearsal on Stage

Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Gift of Horace Havemeyer, 1929 (29.160.26). In the right background of Degass picture sit two well-dressed, middle-aged men, who enjoy their intimacy with the dancers at informal rehearsal. Because ballerinas generally came from lower- class families and exhibited their scantily clad bodies in publicsomething prohibited for respectable bourgeois womenthey were widely assumed to be sexually available, and they often attracted the attentions of wealthy men willing to support them in exchange for sexual favors. Thus several of Degass ballet pictures also include one or more of the dancers mothers, who would accompany their daughters to rehearsals and performances in order to safeguard their virtue.

Degas, Edgar

Stokstad, Marilyn

Art History, 4th ed., Upper Saddle River, N. J.: Pearson Education, 2010 (9780205800377)

Department of Visual Studies

University at Buffalo

ca. 1874

CE

Joe Easterly

drawings (visual works)

Still Image

VS4572762

vw-20100831-1

2011-08-26

2011-08-26

Visual Resources Collection

VS001

21 3/8 x 28 3/4

pastel over brush-and-ink drawing on thin, cream-colored wove paper, laid on bristol board, mounted on canvas

Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, New York)

Impressionist

French

AHI101

UB Only