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by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on September 28, 2026
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
Degas Mlle Fiocre In The Ballet The Source: Introduction
A woman in a blue costume sits beside a pool while a horse lowers its head toward the water. Another woman stands at the left, and a third sits at the right in red. The scene could be mistaken for an outdoor rest, but the ballet costume and a pair of pink slippers near the horse tell us that this is a theatrical world. Edgar Degas's Portrait of Mlle Fiocre in the Ballet “La Source” is the large, finished painting in the Brooklyn Museum, accession 21.111. The museum dates it about 1867–1868. [1] [4] [5]
The older address of this page shortens the title to “Mlle Fiocre in the Ballet The Source.” That URL still identifies this Brooklyn canvas. It is separate from the smaller, lone-figure Fiocre study on another page. The two works share a subject, but this painting has its own composition, dimensions and exhibition history. [1][2]
The work at a glance
- ArtistEdgar Degas (1834–1917)
- Museum titlePortrait of Mlle Fiocre in the Ballet “La Source”
- Datecirca 1867–1868
- MediumOil on canvas
- Dimensions130.8 × 145.1 cm
- CollectionBrooklyn Museum, New York, 21.111
- First public exhibitionParis Salon, 1868
Contents
A ballet picture at rest
Brooklyn identifies the central dancer as Eugénie Fiocre, appearing as Princess Nourreda in La Source. The ballet premiered at the Paris Opéra in 1866. It included the unusual spectacle of a live horse and running water on stage. Those elements help explain why a horse and a pool appear around a costumed dancer. The museum also points to her ballet slippers on the ground between the horse's front legs: a small detail that marks this as theatre even when the setting resembles a landscape. [1]
Fiocre sits almost in the middle, dressed in pale blue and wearing a patterned headdress. Her elbow rests on her raised hand. The pose is quiet, but the surrounding forms are anything but simple. The standing figure on the left holds a dark instrument or object across her lap; the horse's body takes over much of the right half; a woman in red sits at the lower right. Below them, water turns the figures into broken reflections. Degas spreads the viewer's attention across people, animal and painted setting rather than isolating a single dancer. [1][3]
The horse makes an especially strong interruption. Its rounded back crosses the upper right, while its head descends toward the pool beside Fiocre. The animal's scale rivals hers. At first it can seem to divide the picture into two halves: the women on one side, the horse on the other. Yet the head and front legs bring the animal back into the central activity around the water. Degas gives the horse a bodily weight that a painted backdrop would not have. [1]
At the left, dark foliage or rock forms a shadow around the standing woman. Her ochre clothing makes a bright vertical counterweight to Fiocre's blue. At the right, the red seated woman draws the eye toward the lower edge. The three coloured figures form a loose arc around the horse and water. None is caught in a dance step. The moment feels suspended, as though action has paused long enough for the people and setting to register individually. That sense of pause is an interpretation of the visible composition, not proof of a particular rehearsal instant. [1]
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Brooklyn describes the picture as portraying a pause in a rehearsal and says Degas completed it in his studio after making sketches. This matters because the canvas should not be read as a photograph-like record of an event at the Opéra. It brings theatrical references into a composition made through study and revision. The costume, horse and water connect to the production; their positions in the painting are Degas's pictorial arrangement. [1]
The work also complicates a familiar idea of Degas as simply a painter of dancers in motion. Here the principal performer is seated. Her pose allows the blue folds of her costume to spread across the middle of the canvas. She is visibly a professional in a role, yet Degas gives her an interval away from the performance's movement. This is one of his earliest ballet pictures, and the museum calls it his first painting of a ballet subject. That statement is about the place of this canvas in his work, not a claim that he had never drawn a performer before. [1]
Water supplies another kind of movement. Fiocre's pale skirt and the darker figures break into wavering patches below the bank. The reflection reaches almost to the bottom edge, so the lower part of the canvas is more than empty foreground. It doubles and unsettles the scene above. We can see how a costumed role becomes a visual image without claiming that Degas intended the reflection as a fixed symbol. [1]
The pink slippers have a different function. They are small and easy to miss beneath the large horse. Once found, they sharpen the relation between apparently natural scenery and theatre. A horse drinking at a pool might belong to a landscape, but ballet shoes placed nearby belong to a dancer preparing for or emerging from performance. The detail asks the viewer to look carefully before treating the background as an ordinary outdoor place. [1]
From the Salon to Brooklyn
Degas showed the finished painting at the Paris Salon of 1868, where the Degas catalogue records it as number 686. This was a public presentation of the large canvas, not the separate private oil study discussed at /mademoiselle-fiocre-in-the-ballet/. The catalogue identifies the Brooklyn painting as MS787 and relates it to other Fiocre studies, including MS1624. Brooklyn dates the finished canvas about 1867–68; the catalogue gives approximately 1867. These nearby estimates should not be compressed into a falsely exact year. [1][2]
According to Brooklyn, the painting stayed in Degas's studio until his death. It passed through the art market after the studio sale and entered the museum through gifts associated with James H. Post, A. Augustus Healy and John T. Underwood. Its current display status should be checked in the museum record. [1][2]
The private Fiocre study helps show what changed. That narrower oil focuses on Fiocre alone in blue above water. The Brooklyn painting broadens the subject into a group with a horse, a second seated woman, a standing woman, slippers and a much wider pool. Their shared title and sitter do not erase the difference between two physical paintings. Looking from one to the other makes Degas's development of the scene visible without suggesting that the Brooklyn canvas is simply an enlarged crop. [1][2]
Look first at Fiocre's pale blue dress, then trace the horse down to its head and the small slippers between its forelegs. Move left to the standing figure and right to the seated woman in red. Finally follow the reflection along the bottom of the canvas. The image gathers the spectacle of La Source into a still, intricate arrangement. Its drama lies in how a dancer, horse, companions and painted water share the same pause. [1]
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References
- Brooklyn Museum, Portrait of Mlle Fiocre in the Ballet “La Source”, 21.111, object record, label and current display status, accessed 27 September 2026. View source
- Michel Schulman, Degas catalogue raisonné, Mlle Fiocre dans le ballet La Source, MS787, object, exhibition and study relationships, accessed 27 September 2026. View source
- Brooklyn Museum image on Wikimedia Commons, file 21.111 SL1-General Use, visual source and museum-contributed image metadata, accessed 27 September 2026. View source
- Edgar Degas, Portrait of Mlle Fiocre in the Ballet “La Source”, circa 1867–1868, oil on canvas. Brooklyn Museum, New York, 21.111. Collection record. View source
- Image: Brooklyn Museum-contributed Wikimedia Commons file, labelled “No known copyright restrictions.” View source
