MURA · THE COLLECTION · EDGAR DEGAS

Ballet at the Paris Opéra

Ballet at the Paris Opéra is a work by Edgar Degas from 1877, made in pastel over a monotype print on cream laid paper. It shows dancers on stage seen from the orchestra pit and measures 35.2 by 70.6 cm at the plate. It belongs to the Art Institute of Chicago, a gift of Mary and Leigh Block in 1981.

Edgar Degas · 1877 · Pastel over monotype on cream laid paper · Impressionism · story written 25 September 2026

What you are looking at

The museum describes the view from the orchestra pit, with the necks of the double basses intruding into the dancers' space. The central dancer stands in fifth position, en pointe, but the loose placement of the corps de ballet and the dancers' free-flowing hair suggest a rehearsal rather than a performance. Degas's characteristic cropping and odd vantage point give the scene its immediacy. The Paris Opéra, the museum notes, was the official school of the first state-supported ballet, the Académie Royale de Danse, founded by Louis XIV in 1661; the company had moved into the Palais Garnier in 1875, two years before this work.

How it was painted

Degas was born in Paris in 1834. In the mid-1870s, guided by his friend Ludovic-Napoléon Lepic, he began experimenting with monotype, a print made by drawing or painting on a smooth plate and pressing it onto paper, which yields a single unique impression. He made some 300 monotypes in two periods, from the mid-1870s to the mid-1880s and again in the early 1890s, and often reworked the printed image with pastel. The museum describes this sheet as one of his most inventive combinations: monotype, rarely used at the time, joined with the fragile medium of pastel, on one of the widest plates he ever used. It was shown at the third Impressionist exhibition in 1877, the year it was made. Degas died in Paris in 1917.

Where it went

The work belonged to Albert Hecht in Paris, who died in 1889, then to his widow, who lent it to the Degas exhibition at the Galerie Georges Petit in 1924, and to their daughter Suzanne, later Mme Emmanuel Pontremoli, who died in 1956. Mary and Leigh Block of Chicago owned it by 1967, when it was shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and gave it to the Art Institute in 1981. It has since been lent to Degas and the Dance in Detroit in 2002–03 and to the Kimbell Art Museum in 2008. The museum lists no current gallery for it.

Why it is in Mura

It belongs to Mura's Impressionist Life collection with a dreamy mood: pale skirts glowing against a dark stage.