Degas’s Dance Class – 1000-piece puzzle

The dancers’ gestures are explored with almost obsessive attention . For example, the one with the yellow bow sitting on the piano is scratching her back with her left hand. Meanwhile, the one with the red bow in her hair, seen from behind, is fanning herself with a fan.
Furthermore, among the others, there is a dancer who adjusts her earring, one who fixes her hair, one who observes, one who laughs, one who speaks.
with her classmate. As in any school class, when, towards the end of class, the atmosphere becomes more relaxed and informal.

Capturing these marginal but significant aspects of everyday life is a precise choice of the artist, who in each of his works places himself in relation to the characters, according to what he himself loved to say,

As if they were looking at each other through a keyhole

Degas carefully and lovingly recreates the atmosphere of the room, placing his girls in a soft light that further softens their movements. This light comes partly from the right, where we imagine a large window, and partly from the back, through another window in the adjoining room.

Finally, from a technical point of view, in opposition to Impressionist theories, he does not reject either perspective drawing (which identifies a vanishing point external to the painting and a particularly high horizon line), nor the emphasis on details (very evident in the figure of the master, whose clear and defined volume makes it the fulcrum of the entire composition).

Furthermore, the abolition of black and white as non-colors appears largely disregarded here. The girls’ tutus are white, but their sense of vaporous lightness is underscored by the presence of shades of the same color as the bows they wear at their waists, and the satin ribbons around their necks are black.
The overall neutral tone of the parquet (brown) and the walls (greenish), against which the dancers’ white costumes stand out best, contributes to giving the whole a sense of quiet realism, typical of all the artist’s interiors.