A dancer in a blue sash practices before the mirror, while others at left and at rear look on, adjust their costumes, or await their turns, keeping their toes pointed and legs turned out all the while. While the dancer in a pink sash practices this pose for Perrot, a flurry of activity surrounds these two central figures. With his face presented in profil perdu (literally, a lost profile, with the head at a three-quarter angle), Perrot looks to the dancer at center as she executes a piqué attitude, with her right arm raised high, left arm straight out to her side, and right leg bent toward her back. At the right side of this nearly square canvas, though seemingly at the center of the room, stands the famed ballet master Jules Perrot (1810–1892), with both arms outstretched and hands resting on a long cane. Faure lent it to the second Impressionist exhibition of 1876 under the title Examen de danse (Reff 1976 Clayson 1986). (Faure became a major collector of Impressionist paintings and, eventually, the owner of the largest collection of Degas’s paintings in France.) The present work was delivered to Faure in November 1874, and Degas was paid five thousand francs for it. The Painting: In 1873, the great opera baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure commissioned from Degas a picture depicting ballerinas of the Opera ballet corps at an examination or dance class (Pantazzi 1988).
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