Porträt von Mlle Fiocre im Ballett „La Source“

This is where Degas's great subject begins. Before the thousands of dancers he would go on to paint, there was this, his first ballet picture, shown at the Paris Salon in 1868. It portrays Eugenie Fiocre, a celebrated ballerina, in her role in La Source, a lavish production the Opera staged with a real stream of running water and a live horse on stage, both of which Degas puts in. But he catches her in a pause, resting, and gives no sign of theatre or audience. You could take it for a scene from myth. The one tell is down between the horse's front legs, a pair of pink ballet slippers, set aside on the ground.