The Dance Class

The Dance Class is an 1874 oil painting on canvas by the French artist Edgar Degas. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York. The painting and its companion work in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, are amongst the most ambitious works by Degas on the theme of ballet. The imaginary scene depicts a dance class being held under the supervision of Jules Perrot, a famous ballet master, in the old Paris Opera, which had actually burnt down the previous year.

The poster on the wall for Rossini's Guillaume Tell is a tribute to the operatic singer Jean-Baptiste Faure, who had commissioned the work. The painting is on view in the Metropolitan Museum's Gallery 815 as of December 2023.

The physical object — Oil on canvas, 32 7/8 x 30 3/8 in. (83.5 x 77.2 cm) — carries its own history of handling and restoration. Edgar Degas's brushwork here moves between exacting description and looser, more suggestive passages, a balance typical of 19th-century American studio practice.

Look closely and the painting opens up. Objects you might pass over — a folded letter, a half-drawn curtain, the angle of a glance — were placed to be read. Even the everyday is loaded: a basin, a candle, a worn shoe become small monuments to a vanished daily world.

Today the painting is held by Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY in New York, where it remains a touchstone for understanding Edgar Degas's contribution to Western art. It has been studied, copied, restored, and argued over for centuries — proof that great paintings keep generating new readings long after their creators have gone.

“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”