The Ballet Class

Edgar Degas

Oil on canvas

Musée d'Orsay

This celebrated oil painting captures a group of young ballet dancers at the end of an exhausting rehearsal session, overseen by the silver-haired ballet master Jules Perrot in a light-filled studio at the Paris Opera. Degas masterfully arranges the figures in a sweeping diagonal across the composition, with dancers stretching, scratching their backs, adjusting hair, and staring into the distance — candidly depicting the rigorous reality behind the glamour of ballet. Edgar Degas (1834–1917), a titan of French Impressionism who preferred to call himself a Realist, gained rare backstage access to the Paris Opera through a friend in the orchestra, and devoted over 1,500 works to the theme of dance. Hanging today in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, this painting is one of the most ambitious and beloved works Degas ever created, offering anyone who displays it a window into the beauty, discipline, and humanity of 19th-century Parisian life.