Dancers in the Foyer
Oil on canvas. 41.5 x 92 cm.
Painted around 1889, Lemoisne, III, 996.

Is it odd or not, rather, significant that the work of the self-contained bachelor and sarcastic mocker Degas culminates in the representation of the ballet? He thus acquires the easy lightness which his personal life lacked and which he longed for.
The theme of the ballet and the daily routine of the ballet girls is handled from the 70s down into the 90s in oil and later mainly in pastel, the treatment extending from the lovely to the grotesque, with which 20th century expressionism is heralded.
Degas follows the ballet in his pictures from the statically constructed ballet lessons with the dancing master to the actual performances on the stage, which he watches from his box, and he goes behind the scenes where the dancers wait for their cues and spend their last minutes in practice. In these later pictures, including ours, he penetrates to the heart, as it were, of the ballet, and thus achieves maximum contact with this theme. His rapid style, developed from the pastel, leaves the preliminary brushwork visible, and thus heightens the impression of the fleeting glimpse of the swiftly changing groups of dancers. In five related pastel studies it is clear that the pastel is a stylistically formative element. For the dancer in the middle with the bent arms there also exists a study in the nude.
The decentralized grouping of the dancers on the right-hand side and the long horizontal shape of the picture are, again, elements showing Japanese influence.