The Politics of Location in Edgar Degas's Depictions of the Paris Opera

This thesis examines the political connotations of Impressionist artist Edgar Degas's (1834-1917) images of the ballet produced in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) and the Paris Commune (1871). While scholarship on the subject of Degas's rendering of the ballet is extensive, that literature tends to focus on the artist's treatment of the dancers, or his own experiences of the ballet. To date, scholars have not fully addressed the political symbolism of the artist's choice to represent the outdated Salle le Peletier (1821-1873) rather than the new and lavish Palais Garnier (1875-). In this thesis, I argue that in depicting the Salle le Peletier - a building strongly associated with the history of French revolutions, and located in a bustling center of artistic production - Degas implicitly rejects the Palais Garnier because of its association with the governments of the Second Empire (1852-1870) and Third Republic (1870-1940). His ballet pictures, in other words, constituted a veiled political critique: by representing the Salle le Peletier, he obliquely expressed his discontent with the Third Republic without violating the severe censorship laws put in place immediately after the Commune. I examine a group of seven paintings of ballet class produced between 1873, when the Salle le Peletier was destroyed by fire, and 1881, when the censorship laws were repealed. I argue that specific references to the Salle le Peletier charge Degas's pictures - which depict the relation of working-class female dancers with their autocratic male ballet master - with political tensions. Insofar as Degas evokes class conflict and sets that conflict in a building named for a famous revolutionary figure, these pictures can be read as fanning lingering bourgeois fears of working-class revolt, and as a reminder of the brutal suppression of revolutionaries that brought the Commune to an end.