Harlequin and Columbine

In the summer of 1885 Degas sat in on rehearsals at the Paris Opéra for a new ballet called The Twins of Bergamo, a comic piece about two brothers, both dressed as Harlequin, who arrive from Italy and fall for the same girl. It opened that January, in 1886, and Degas came away with a small group of works chasing its costumes and gestures. This is one of them, Harlequin in his diamond-patterned suit leaning toward Columbine. The story mattered less to him than the split-second poses of dancers caught between steps, which is why he haunted rehearsals instead of performances. He set the scene down on a wooden panel barely a foot high, small and quick, close to the figures he was watching from the edge of the stage.