Skip Navigation

Portrait of Mlle Fiocre in the Ballet "La Source" (Portrait de Mlle...E[ugénie] F[iocre]: à propos du ballet "La Source")

Edgar Degas

European Art

The first of Edgar Degas’s many works to focus on the ballet, this painting depicts Eugénie Fiocre, a celebrated ballerina, in her role as princess Nourreda in the ballet La Source. The production presented a fantasy of an exotic “Orient,” featuring Mlle Fiocre as (in the words of one writer) “the prettiest blonde houri who ever wore the bonnet and the corset of pearls in the paradise of Muhammad.” The 1866 production at the Paris Opéra—with its elaborate costumes and sets, including the hydraulic-powered running stream and live horse seen in Degas’s painting—astonished audiences and provided fodder for caricaturists, who compared the women at the water’s edge to laundresses.

Degas portrays Mlle Fiocre resting during a pause in rehearsal. There is nothing in the painting to indicate that this is a theater set rather than an imagined historical or literary scene except for the dancer’s pink ballet slippers, visible between the horse’s front legs. Mixing stage artifice and psychological realism, Degas captures a complex moment when time, place, self, and performance intersect.
MEDIUM Oil on canvas
  • Place Made: France
  • DATES ca. 1867-1868
    DIMENSIONS 51 1/2 x 57 1/8 in., 166 lb. (130.8 x 145.1 cm, 75.3kg) frame: 63 x 69 x 6 1/4 in. (160 x 175.3 x 15.9 cm)  (show scale)
    COLLECTIONS European Art
    ACCESSION NUMBER 21.111
    CREDIT LINE Gift of James H. Post, A. Augustus Healy, and John T. Underwood
    MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
    CAPTION Edgar Degas (Paris, France, 1834–1917, Paris, France). Portrait of Mlle Fiocre in the Ballet "La Source" (Portrait de Mlle...E[ugénie] F[iocre]: à propos du ballet "La Source"), ca. 1867-1868. Oil on canvas, 51 1/2 x 57 1/8 in., 166 lb. (130.8 x 145.1 cm, 75.3kg). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of James H. Post, A. Augustus Healy, and John T. Underwood, 21.111 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 21.111_PS11.jpg)
    IMAGE overall, 21.111_PS11.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2022
    "CUR" at the beginning of an image file name means that the image was created by a curatorial staff member. These study images may be digital point-and-shoot photographs, when we don\'t yet have high-quality studio photography, or they may be scans of older negatives, slides, or photographic prints, providing historical documentation of the object.
    RIGHTS STATEMENT No known copyright restrictions
    This work may be in the public domain in the United States. Works created by United States and non-United States nationals published prior to 1923 are in the public domain, subject to the terms of any applicable treaty or agreement. You may download and use Brooklyn Museum images of this work. Please include caption information from this page and credit the Brooklyn Museum. If you need a high resolution file, please fill out our online application form (charges apply). The Museum does not warrant that the use of this work will not infringe on the rights of third parties, such as artists or artists' heirs holding the rights to the work. It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions before copying, transmitting, or making other use of protected items beyond that allowed by "fair use," as such term is understood under the United States Copyright Act. The Brooklyn Museum makes no representations or warranties with respect to the application or terms of any international agreement governing copyright protection in the United States for works created by foreign nationals. For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch. For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright. If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org.
    RECORD COMPLETENESS
    Not every record you will find here is complete. More information is available for some works than for others, and some entries have been updated more recently. Records are frequently reviewed and revised, and we welcome any additional information you might have.