Degas’s little rats: When art dances with shadow
Imagine Paris in 1874. The Palais Garnier, brand new, unfurls its gilding and marble beneath glittering chandeliers. Backstage, however, another reality plays out: that of the petits rats, young girls in worn-out tutus, their feet bloodied in too-tight slippers, their bodies aching from hours of rehearsal. It was here, in this raw intimacy, that Degas set up his easel. Not to celebrate the ethereal grace of ballerinas, but to capture the other side of the spectacle—the hunched backs, the tense faces, the mechanical gestures of a profession that grinds as much as it enchants.
By Artedusa
••9 min readWhy did these images, now iconic, shock so deeply at the time? Because Degas did not paint goddesses. He painted laborers. Daughters of laundresses or seamstresses, whose bodies were both their tools and their wares. And above all, because he observed them as one spies on a secret—with a fascination that wavered between empathy and predation. His gaze, at once clinical and sensual, made him the first "voyeur" of modern art. But was he a predator or an accomplice? A misogynist or a discreet ally? The answer, like his pastels, dissolves into a whirl of color and ambiguity.
01The Opéra, a theater of illusions
The Paris Opéra was not merely a performance venue. It was a machine for dreams—and for fantasies. Under the Second Empire, ballet became one of the bourgeoisie’s favorite pastimes, a ritual where art, seduction, and power intertwined. Subscribers, often wealthy men, purchased not just seats but the right to roam backstage. There, they encountered the dancers—young girls from modest backgrounds, many of whom supplemented their meager incomes by becoming helping hands… or kept women.
Degas was neither a subscriber nor a protector. He had secured a permanent pass thanks to a singer friend, allowing him to haunt the rehearsal studios at will. What fascinated him was not the magic of the performance, but its making. Sweating bodies, muscles straining beneath tights, faces marked by effort. "I want to show the work, not the result," he confessed. A radical approach, one that defied the prevailing academicism, where ballerinas were depicted as celestial creatures, frozen in idealized poses.
His Ballet Class (1874), now at the Metropolitan Museum, is a masterpiece of this subversion. In the foreground, a dancer stretches, her back turned, while another, exhausted, scratches herself with an almost vulgar gesture. In the background, the ballet master, Jules Perrot, surveys the scene with a stern air. Nothing glamorous here: just the daily grind of a workshop where bodies are shaped before being delivered to the public. Degas does not show the dance. He shows what precedes it—and what it costs.
02The disturbing gaze: between voyeurism and complicity
Degas had a gift for making himself invisible. He would station himself in a corner, pencil in hand, and observe. Sometimes, he even used a camera—a novelty at the time—to capture fleeting attitudes. His compositions, often abruptly cropped like stolen snapshots, reinforce this impression of voyeurism. In Dancer Adjusting Her Shoe (1873), a young girl bends to tie her ribbon, offering the viewer a plunging view of her décolletage. The framing, tight and uncompromising, leaves no room for idealization.
Yet reducing Degas to a mere voyeur would be a mistake. His gaze is not that of a predator, but of an almost anthropological observer. He does not judge, does not moralize. He records. In The Rehearsal (1874), the dancers are no longer objects of desire, but exhausted workers, their bodies seeming to buckle under the weight of discipline. One of them, in the foreground, crosses her arms in a gesture of weary defiance. Another, seated on the floor, massages her foot with a grimace of pain. These details, which would have horrified critics of the time, lend his canvases a rare humanity.
But beware: this humanity comes at a price. Degas never gives his models a voice. They remain silhouettes, moving bodies, never fully realized individuals. Even Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (1881), his most famous sculpture, is both a technical feat and a source of controversy. The young Marie van Goethem, the model for the work, was a petit rat of 14 whose ruined family had placed her at the Opéra. Degas depicts her with almost cruel precision: thick features, a prominent jaw, hair pulled tightly back. Critics of the time were appalled. "A monstrosity," wrote one. "A wax creature from a pathology museum." Yet it is precisely this lack of artifice that gives the work its power. Marie is not a muse. She is a child fighting to survive.
03Technique in service of unease
Degas was an alchemist of materials. He mixed techniques with an audacity that baffled his contemporaries. His pastels, in particular, are virtuoso masterpieces. He worked them in successive layers, fixing each stratum with steam to prevent smudging, then reworking them with brush or finger to blur the contours. The result? Vibrant surfaces where colors seem to pulse like living skin.
Take Blue Dancers (1897), now at the Pushkin Museum. Four dancers, clad in electric-blue tutus, intertwine in a blurred, almost abstract movement. Their faces are barely sketched, their bodies merging into a single collective energy. Here, Degas employs a technique akin to sfumato, where outlines fade to better suggest motion. The light, diffuse, seems to emanate from the bodies themselves, as if the dancers were luminous sources. This is no longer painting. It is magic.
His monotypes, less known, are just as fascinating. He painted with greasy ink on a metal plate, then pressed it onto paper, creating a unique image with blurred edges and violent contrasts. Dancer Onstage with a Bouquet (1878) is a perfect example of this technique. The dancer, lit by stage lights, seems to emerge from the shadows like an apparition. The bouquet she holds is barely visible, as if the light had swallowed it. Degas plays with the limits of perception, blurring the boundaries between reality and illusion.
04The backstage of a scandal: when art disturbs
In 1881, at the sixth Impressionist exhibition, Degas presented Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. The public’s reaction was immediate: an uproar. Critics accused the work of being "vulgar," "ugly," even "degenerate." Why such rejection? Because Degas had dared to show what no one wanted to see: the sordid reality behind the ballet’s dream.
At the time, dancers were perceived as both sacred and suspect. Sacred, because they embodied grace and beauty. Suspect, because many of them, from poor backgrounds, relied on the protection of wealthy patrons to survive. Degas, by depicting them without embellishment, shattered the myth. His dancers were not goddesses. They were flesh-and-blood girls, with their flaws, their fatigue, their broken dreams.
This moral ambiguity fueled debates for decades. Some saw a social critique, a denunciation of the era’s inequalities. Others, a form of disguised misogyny. After all, Degas was known for his biting remarks about women. "They are beasts," he said. "Charming beasts, but beasts." Yet his works tell a more complex story. In The Dance Class (1874), a dancer gazes at herself in a mirror, as if checking her appearance. Behind her, a blurred man observes the scene. This almost invisible detail is revealing: Degas does not just show the dancers. He shows the gaze that weighs upon them.
05The legacy of a gaze: from Picasso to Black Swan
Degas died in 1917, nearly blind, in a Paris he no longer recognized. Yet his influence only grew. The Cubists, like Picasso, saw in his fragmented compositions a foreshadowing of their own work. The Surrealists, like Dalí, were fascinated by his blend of realism and dream. Even filmmakers drew inspiration from him. In Black Swan (2010), Darren Aronofsky multiplies close-ups of Natalie Portman’s bloodied feet, the exhausting rehearsals, the sordid backstage. The film is a barely veiled homage to Degas’s world.
But Degas’s most unsettling legacy may be the question he left unanswered: who is watching whom? His dancers, always observed, never heard, are they victims or accomplices? Objects or subjects? Even today, feminists remain divided over his case. For some, like Linda Nochlin, Degas embodies the dominant male gaze, reducing women to soulless bodies. For others, like Carol Armstrong, he is a profoundly modern artist, whose voyeurism is above all a form of melancholy.
One thing is certain: Degas changed how we see. Before him, art celebrated beauty. After him, it began to question what lies behind it. His dancers, with their wrinkled tutus and tired faces, are not just painting subjects. They are mirrors. Mirrors that reflect our own contradictions: our fascination with grace, our indifference to suffering, our complicity with systems that exploit bodies.
06Degas’s final secret
In 1918, after his death, hundreds of unfinished works were discovered in his studio. Among them: wax sculptures, sketched pastels, forgotten monotypes. But also notebooks filled with drawings—dancers, of course, but also women bathing, laundresses, milliners. Women, always women, observed in their intimacy.
Why did Degas never exhibit these works? Out of modesty? Perfectionism? Or because he knew some things should not be shown? One thing is certain: these drawings, sketches, and fragments are perhaps the most honest works he ever produced. Stolen snapshots of life, unadorned, unscripted.
Today, when you contemplate a Degas canvas, remember this: you are not just facing a work of art. You are facing a gaze. A gaze that dared to look where no one else did. A gaze that, more than a century later, continues to ask: and you, what do you really see?