![]() The most famous of these rats is Marie van Goethem, part of a family that emigrated from Belgium. They worked hard for 10 to 12 hours a day, paid little with no compensating fame or respect, and then discarded when they got too old and were no longer needed, sometimes ending up as prostitutes. These young ballerinas were known as the "little rats" of the Paris Opera. Rarely do we glimpse a smile.īy Edgar Degas - Metropolitan Museum of Art, online collection (The Met object ID 110000595), ![]() There may be beauty in the ballerinas' poses and movement, but no joy in their execution. ![]() The tutus are so frilly, the legs and arms exquisitely posed even when they're not dancing, but the faces are often turned away from us, and when we do see their faces, they are deliberately smudged, or appear pained, weary, and exhausted, so unlike the radiant faces of Renoir's young women. I've always been both fascinated and disturbed by Degas' paintings of young ballerinas. ![]()
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