Edgar Degas

French, 1834-1917

Mlle Fiocre dans le ballet "La Source" (Mademoiselle Fiocre in the ballet "La Source") — Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917). *Mlle Fiocre dans le ballet* La Source (*Mademioselle Fiocre in the Ballet* Le Source), 1866–68. Oil on canvas, 43 1/2 x 36 inches (110.5 x 91.4 cm). Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; Gift of Paul Rosenberg and Co., 1958 (1958:2).

Mlle Fiocre dans le ballet "La Source" (Mademoiselle Fiocre in the ballet "La Source"), 1866-1868

Currently on View

oil on canvas

support: 32 x 25 3/8 inches (81.28 x 64.4525 cm); framed: 43 1/4 x 36 9/16 x 4 3/8 inches (109.86 x 92.87 x 11.11 cm)

Collection Buffalo AKG Art Museum

Gift of Paul Rosenberg and Co., 1958

1958:2

Inscriptions:

stamp; signature, undated / front, lower right / Degas

Provenance:

May 6-8, 1918, purchased by Alphonse Kann [1870-1948] from from the Degas atelier sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, no. 38;
until 1938 or 1940, Alphonse Kann, Paris. In 1938 Kann fled Paris for London, leaving his art collection behind in his Sant-Germain-en-Laye mansion.
June-October 1940, confiscated by the Germans and stored at the Jeu de Paume, a collecting point for art and artifacts seized from French and Belgian Jewish owners by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) ("Special Task Force"), one of the main agencies engaged in the plunder of cultural objects in Nazi-occupied countries. The painting was "considered for possible exchange' but '[a]lthough slated for transport to Nikolsburg on 1 August 1944," was on a train that never left Paris.
July 11, 1947, restituted to Alphonse Kann;
1948, transferred to Kann's heirs after his death.
by 1952, Walter Feilchenfeldt, Sr., Zurich;
1952, Paul Rosenberg & Co., New York City;
March 10, 1985, donated to the Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo

Object Classifications:

Paintings

Studies

Oil painting

Preparatory study

Information may change due to ongoing research. Glossary of Terms

This work is one of several studies Edgar Degas made when working toward the finished painting—a scene inspired by the ballet La Source, a woodland fantasy set in a mythical Middle East. These were the first works in which the artist took up the motif of dancers and theatrical performance. Here, he portrays Eugénie Fiocre (French, 1845–1908), a renowned dancer who rose from humble origins to become the principal ballerina in the Paris Opéra, as Nourreda, the ballet’s lead role, in an extravagant production he saw in Paris in 1866. Rather than depict Fiocre at the height of a performance, Degas instead chose to capture her in a more private moment of contemplation during a rehearsal, seated alongside another figure in a nonspecific landscape. The artist executed the scene’s dark washes and watery reflections in a fluid, open brushwork that lends itself to the overall somber tone of the composition.

Label from Humble and Human: An Exhibition in Honor of Ralph C. Wilson, Jr., February 2–May 26, 2019