Edgar Degas - Dance Foyer, Opera rue Le Peletier Ceramic Tile

The Dance Foyer at the Opera on the rue Le Peletier (Le Foyer de la danse à l'Opéra de la rue Le Peletier), painted in 1872 in oil on canvas by French Impressionist painter Edgar Degas. Young dancers practice and wait in the rehearsal foyer of the old Paris Opéra, while the room's architectural lines organise the figures into small groups. Degas treats the studio as a workplace rather than a glamourous stage, paying attention to posture, repetition and the discipline of training. The painting belongs to the moment when the Opera became one of his central subjects, extending from musicians in the pit to dancers backstage and in class. The rue Le Peletier building burned in 1873, so Degas's early ballet scenes also preserve a theatrical world that disappeared just as he was beginning to explore it.