Location📍 National Gallery of Art → West Building Main Floor, Gallery M83

The Dance Class

Edgar Degas’s horizontal oil painting, The Dance Class (c. 1873), depicts a dimly lit ballet studio filled with approximately two dozen young dancers. The dancers wear knee-length tutus and tight bodices in canary yellow, rose pink, or royal blue. In the composition, two dancers are seen descending a spiral staircase on the left, while several dancers cluster in the center with some practicing en pointe. Closer to the viewer, four dancers are grouped around a mahogany-brown bench; one wears a scarlet-red jacket, another bends over to tie her slippers, and a third sits while rose-pink slippers lie nearby. The studio features dark olive-green walls, while an adjoining room visible through a wide opening shows brighter, parchment-yellow walls. The faces and costume details are loosely painted. The artist signed the canvas "Degas" in the lower right corner.