A dimly lit ballet studio is filled with about two dozen young dancers tying on their shoes, stretching, or practicing en pointe in this horizontal painting. The girls all wear dance costumes with knee length tutus, tight bodices, and belts in canary yellow, rose pink, or royal blue. The girls all have brown or dark blond hair. The room seems to be mostly lit from windows on the wall opposite us so some of the girls’ faces are in shadow, but all appear to have light skin. Starting from the left, two dancers are visible from the waist down as they descend a spiral staircase that rises along…
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The Dance Class

Edgar Degas (French, 1834 - 1917)

c. 1873

Medium
oil on canvas
Classification
Painting
Dimensions
overall: 47.63 × 62.23 cm (18 3/4 × 24 1/2 in.) ; framed: 72.39 × 87.63 × 9.53 cm (28 1/2 × 34 1/2 × 3 3/4 in.)
Culture
French
Museum
National Gallery of Art, CF
Credit line
Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection, 1926)
Rights
Public domain (NGA Open Access, CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it
Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed

View at the National Gallery of Art