Danseuses sur la scène

Degas painted dancers for most of his life, but almost never the glamorous part. Here five of them are caught in rehearsal, warming up and setting off across the boards, all turned toward the ballet master, who is only a rough grey smear at the back. He wanted the labor behind ballet, the aching repetition, not the finished show. The composition is pushed hard to one side and sliced off by the right edge, a trick he took from Japanese prints and from his own experiments with the camera. He made this in 1889, the year Paris raised the Eiffel Tower for the World's Fair. The main dancer stands slightly off the middle, so your eye keeps sliding past her.