The Song Rehearsal 1873

Curator: This is "The Song Rehearsal," an oil painting by Edgar Degas, dating from 1873. Editor: It's immediately striking how unfinished it feels. The textures seem built up in layers, particularly in the skirts of the singers and that vibrant red cloth draped over the chair. You can really see the artist’s hand and the build up of oil paint on canvas. Curator: Precisely. And in that very painterly, almost sketch-like quality, we can perceive Degas' engagement with fleeting moments and impressions, a hallmark of the Impressionist movement. He is showing us not just a rehearsal but the sensation of being in one, right? Think of what a rehearsal embodies, the liminal space between preparation and performance. Editor: I'm interested in that contrast too – this image flirts with completion and incompletion, so the viewer also lingers in that state of anticipation. Considering the context in which Degas was working, the industrial revolution allowed for new kinds of pigments, but did these colors also serve new patrons and markets? It seems like this domestic scene is only seemingly timeless; maybe it speaks to new forms of patronage? Curator: Absolutely. The image certainly depicts domesticity. Look how Degas subtly placed the female subjects in relation to domestic props—like a carefully arranged display. However, these visual relationships serve a specific iconography that represents, in this case, the musical muse in full voice! She rises into fame from domestic ordinariness, her transformation almost dream-like as she's supported and aided by music and art. Editor: All this domestic labor to reach the cultural moment! These impressionist interiors sometimes fail to communicate all the actual material resources—the money, space, the availability of art supplies—required to produce art, even of rehearsals. But it is interesting, I suppose, how he captures the tension between all of that behind-the-scenes labor that still hangs on every canvas edge and artistic accomplishment, doesn't it? Curator: I find your point particularly salient given this very dynamic tension between creation and execution within the depicted content and visible processes. Editor: Yes, an artwork about performance embodies similar tensions in its own creation. That is how I will consider “The Song Rehearsal” going forward!