Portrait of Mlle Fiocre in the Ballet "La Source" (Portrait de [ugénie] F[iocre]: à propos du ballet "La Source") Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917). Portrait of Mlle Fiocre in the Ballet "La Source" (Portrait de [ugénie] F[iocre]: à propos du ballet "La Source"), ca. 1867-1868. Oil on canvas, 51 1/2 x 57 1/8 in., 166 lb. ( x cm, ). The first of Edgar Degas’s many works to focus on the ballet, this painting depicts Eugénie Fiocre, a celebrated ballerina, in her role as princess Nourreda in the ballet La Source. The production presented a fantasy of an exotic “Ori
Portrait of Mlle Fiocre in the Ballet "La Source" (Portrait de [ugénie] F[iocre]: à propos du ballet "La Source") Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917). Portrait of Mlle Fiocre in the Ballet "La Source" (Portrait de [ugénie] F[iocre]: à propos du ballet "La Source"), ca. 1867-1868. Oil on canvas, 51 1/2 x 57 1/8 in., 166 lb. ( x cm, ). The first of Edgar Degas’s many works to focus on the ballet, this painting depicts Eugénie Fiocre, a celebrated ballerina, in her role as princess Nourreda in the ballet La Source. The production presented a fantasy of an exotic “Orient,” featuring Mlle Fiocre as (in the words of one writer) “the prettiest blonde houri who ever wore the bonnet and the corset of pearls in the paradise of Muhammad.” The 1866 production at the Paris Opéra—with its elaborate costumes and sets, including the hydraulic-powered running stream and live horse seen in Degas’s painting—astonished audiences and provided fodder for caricaturists, who compared the women at the water’s edge to laundresses. Degas portrays Mlle Fiocre resting during a pause in rehearsal. There is nothing in the painting to indicate that this is a theater set rather than an imagined historical or literary scene except for the dancer’s pink ballet slippers, visible between the horse’s front legs. Mixing stage artifice and psychological realism, Degas captures a complex moment when time, place, self, and performance intersect. European Art ca. 1867-1868
Size: 2031px × 2460px
Photo credit: © BBM / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ?
