Throughout his life, Edgar Degas painted ballet pictures, the majority of which were produced in the 1890s. In these works, he did not show the stars of the stage during their performances, but instead observed the young girls in the ensemble offstage and at their everyday rehearsals. Most likely, Degas had a season ticket for the Opéra Garnier, which opened in 1875, and thus also had access to behind the scenes and to the practice room of the dancers, the so-called foyer. He captured the atmosphere of the rehearsals in fleeting moments, showing the girls between their dances. He portrays them standing or sitting, exhausted, straightening their tutus, or even adjusting their shoulder straps, as is the case here in the Bremen Dancer. Close-up, firmly embedded in the narrow picture detail, the girl dynamically extends her elbow into the foreground, the kind of moment that Degas captures in several works, one that reveals his particular interest in depicting sequences of movement. In many places, the pastel has merely been sketched, revealing the bare paper ground. Degas regarded this work as finished, however—attested to by his signature at the lower right—selling this work while he was still alive.
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