An exuberant display of fecund imagination and keen observation, Edgar Degas’s renowned images of the Paris Opera are among the most sophisticated and visually compelling works he ever created. Celebrating the 350th anniversary of the Opera’s founding, Degas at the Opera will present approximately 100 of the artist’s best-known and beloved works in a range of media, including paintings, pastels, drawings, prints, and sculpture. It will be accompanied by a fully illustrated exhibition catalog.

Degas (1834–1917) is celebrated as the painter of dancers, a subject that dominated his art for nearly four decades. Although there have been many exhibitions celebrating his love of the ballet, this will be the first to consider his enduring fascination with the opera. A music lover and regular visitor to performances, Degas explored both the public spaces of the Paris Opera—auditorium, stage, and boxes—as well as more private ones, including dance studios and backstage. He was friends with many of the people he depicted in his paintings, from dancers, singers, and orchestra musicians to the dark-suited subscribers.

The Opera also fueled some of Degas’s most daring technical innovations, including his first monotype, The Ballet Master (c. 1876), and his wax statue Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (1881), which revolutionized sculpture.

The exhibition is curated by Degas expert Henri Loyrette with Kimberly A. Jones, curator of 19th-century French paintings, National Gallery of Art; Leïla Jarbouai, graphic arts curator, Musée d'Orsay; and Marine Kisiel, curator, Musée d'Orsay.

Organization: Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Musées d'Orsay et de l'Orangerie, Paris

Sponsors: BP America is proud to sponsor this exhibition as part of its commitment to the US

Adrienne Arsht also kindly provided a leadership gift for this exhibition

Additional funding is provided by The Exhibition Circle of the National Gallery of Art