Portrait of Mlle Fiocre in the Ballet "La Source" (Portrait de Mlle...E[ugénie] F[iocre]: à propos du ballet "La Source")

In this canvas painted for the 1868 Salon, Degas combined, for the first time in his work, the narrative content, large scale, and complexity of history painting with the representation of modern life—in this instance, the ballet. Degas depicts the famous ballerina Eugénie Fiocre, at center in pale blue, in La Source, an elaborate production, with exotic costumes and sets, that also included bodies of water onstage and live horses. Painting the dancers at a pause in their rehearsal—note the cast-off ballet slippers—Degas captures them at a transitional moment between the imagined place and time of the ballet and the private reveries of the present. [source]