The Dance Lesson

In the spring of 1879 the Impressionists held their fourth group show in Paris. One of its organisers was the painter Gustave Caillebotte, who was also a generous buyer of his friends' work, and he probably acquired this pastel there or soon afterwards.

It was not planned on a single sheet. It is made from three pieces of paper joined together. Degas added strips at the top and on the right as the picture grew, most likely to make room for the violinist, and there are signs that he changed the girl's pose along the way. The Met also owns his separate pastel study of the musician. What remains is a lesson seen from very close, a young dancer at the barre and, pressed into the foreground, the violinist who played for the class.

When Caillebotte died in 1894, he left the pastel to Renoir, who sold it shortly afterwards.