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Europe
1800-1900

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Becoming Modern, an introduction
What was the Industrial Revolution?
Romanticism
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A beginner's guide
A beginner’s guide to Romanticism
Orientalism
Staging the Egyptian Harem for Western Eyes
France
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Romanticism in France, an introduction
Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, Napoleon Bonaparte Visiting the Pest House in Jaffa
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Portrait of Madame Rivière
Napoleon on His Imperial Throne
Apotheosis of Homer
Painting colonial culture: La Grande Odalisque
Théodore Géricault
Raft of the Medusa
Portraits of the Insane
Eugène Delacroix
Eugène Delacroix, an introduction
Scene of the Massacre at Chios
The cost of war: Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi
The Death of Sardanapalus
Liberty Leading the People
Women of Algiers in Their Apartment
Murals in the Chapel of The Holy Angels, Saint-Sulpice
François Rude, La Marseillaise
Spain
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Francisco Goya
Francisco Goya, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters
Enrique Chagoya on Goya’s Los Caprichos
Francisco Goya, The Family of Charles IV
Francisco Goya, And there’s nothing to be done from The Disasters of War
Francisco Goya, The Third of May, 1808
Francisco Goya, Saturn Devouring One Of His Sons
England
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Henry Fuseli
The Nightmare
Titania and Bottom
William Blake
The spiritual form of Nelson guiding Leviathan
The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins
John Constable
Constable and the English landscape
Wivenhoe Park, Essex
The Hay Wain
View on the Stour near Dedham
Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows
J. M. W. Turner
The Harbor of Dieppe
The Fighting Temeraire
Slave Ship
Snow Storm
Rain, Steam, and Speed -- The Great Western Railway
J.M.W. Turner at Tate Britain
John Martin, The Great Day of His Wrath
John Nash, Royal Pavilion, Brighton
Germany
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Caspar David Friedrich
Monk by the Sea
Abbey in the Oak Forest
Solitary Tree (or Lone Tree)
Woman at a Window
Runge, Hülsenbeck Children
Early photography
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Early Photography: Niépce, Talbot and Muybridge
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre
Paris Boulevard or View of the Boulevard du Temple
The Artist’s Studio / Still Life with Plaster Casts
David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Newhaven Fishwives
Édouard Baldus, Cloister of St. Trophîme, Arles
Muybridge, The Attitudes of Animals in Motion
Getty Conversations
Eadweard Muybridge, The Horse in Motion
Anna Atkins and the cyanotype process
Lady Clementina Hawarden, Clementina and Florence Elizabeth Maude
Julia Margaret Cameron, Mrs. Herbert Duckworth
Roger Fenton, Landscape with clouds
Marey, Joinville Soldier Walking
Francis Galton, eugenics, and photography
Victorian art
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Early Victorian
Sir Edwin Landseer, Windsor Castle in Modern Times
Charles Barry and A.W.N. Pugin, Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament)
Robert Smirke, The British Museum
Cashmere shawls
Pre-Raphaelites and mid-Victorian art
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A beginner's guide
The Pre-Raphaelites, an introduction
The Aesthetic Movement
John Everett Millais
Christ in the House of His Parents
Mariana
Ophelia
Curator’s choice – Millais’s Isabella
Portrait of John Ruskin
A Portrait of John Ruskin and Masculine Ideals of Dress in the Nineteenth Century
The Vale of Rest
Bubbles
William Holman Hunt
Claudio and Isabella
Our English Coasts (Strayed Sheep)
The Awakening Conscience
Isabella or the Pot of Basil
The Lady of Shalott
The Shadow of Death
The Scapegoat
Ford Madox Brown
The Last of England
Work
Curator’s choice – Ford Madox Brown’s Work
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Ecce Ancilla Domini
Beata Beatrix
Proserpine
Henry Wallis, Chatterton
William Powell Frith, Derby Day
William Dyce, Pegwell Bay, Kent – a Recollection of October 5th 1858
Emily Mary Osborn, Nameless and Friendless
John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, Thoughts of the Past
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones
The Golden Stairs
King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid
Sleeping Beauty — but without the Kiss: Burne-Jones and the Briar Rose series
The Depths of the Sea
Hope
John William Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott
William Butterfield, All Saints, Margaret Street, London
William Morris, useful beauty in the home
William Morris and Philip Webb, Red House
Late Victorian
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Sir Frederic Leighton
An Athlete Wrestling with a Python
Bath of Psyche
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Listening to Homer
GF Watts, The Minotaur
Realism
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Realism, an introduction
Honoré Daumier
Rue Transnonain
Nadar Elevating Photography to the Height of an Art
Gustave Courbet
A Burial at Ornans
The Stonebreakers
The Painter's Studio, a real allegory summing up seven years of my artistic and moral life
Bonjour Monsieur Courbet
Rosa Bonheur
Plowing in the Nivernais (or The First Dressing)
Sheep in the Highlands
Jean-François Millet
L'Angélus
The Gleaners
Xu Bing on Jean-François Millet’s Haystacks: Autumn
Édouard Manet
Music in the Tuileries Gardens
Olympia
Le déjeuner sur l'herbe (Luncheon on the Grass)
The Railway
Émile Zola
The Balcony
Plum Brandy
In the Conservatory
Corner of a Café-Concert
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère
Better Know: Manet’s Bar
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère with Griselda Pollock
Eva Gonzàles, A Loge at the Théâtre des Italiens
Second Empire
Winterhalter’s Portrait of The Empress Eugénie
Thomas Couture, Romans of the Decadence
Haussmann the Demolisher and the creation of modern Paris
Charles Garnier, The Paris Opéra
Impressionism
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A beginner's guide
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Impressionism, an introduction
What does “Impressionism” mean?
How the Impressionists got their name
Impressionism: painting modern life
Impressionist color
Impressionist pictorial space
Japonisme
Looking east: how Japan inspired Monet, Van Gogh and other Western artists
Edgar Degas
The Bellelli Family
 At the Races in the Countryside
The Dance Class
Visit to a Museum
Gustave Caillebotte
The Floor Scrapers (Les raboteurs de parquet)
Paris Street; Rainy Day
Man at his Bath
Berthe Morisot
The Cradle
Hunting Butterflies
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
How to recognize Renoir: The Swing
La Loge
The Grands Boulevards
Moulin de la Galette
Portrait of Madame Charpentier and Her Children
Luncheon of the Boating Party
The Large Bathers
Claude Monet
Impressionism as optical realism: Monet
How to recognize Monet: The Basin at Argenteuil
The Argenteuil Bridge
The Gare Saint-Lazare
Cliff Walk at Pourville
Wheatstacks (Snow Effect, Morning)
Getty Conversations
Poplars
Rouen Cathedral Series
Les Nymphéas (The Water Lilies)
Mary Cassatt
In the Loge
Little Girl in a Blue Armchair
Woman with a Pearl Necklace in a Loge
The Child's Bath
The Coiffure
Post-Impressionism
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A beginner's guide
Introduction to Neo-Impressionism, Part I
Introduction to Neo-Impressionism, Part II
Neo-Impressionist Color Theory
Georges Seurat
Bathers at Asnières
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte - 1884
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte – 1884 by Georges Seurat
Vincent van Gogh
The Potato Eaters
Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin
Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear
The Bedroom
Van Gogh, Irises
Getty Conversations
The Starry Night
The Artist Project: Sopheap Pich on van Gogh’s drawings
The Pont-Aven School and Synthetism
Paul Gauguin
Gauguin, Self-Portrait with Portrait of Émile Bernard (Les misérables)
Vision after the Sermon (or Jacob Wrestling with the Angel)
Nevermore
The Red Cow
Spirit of the Dead Watching
Oviri
Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?
Gauguin and Laval in Martinique
Paul Cézanne
Cézanne, an introduction
The Bather
The Basket of Apples
Still Life with Plaster Cupid
The Red Rock
Turning Road at Montgeroult
Mont Sainte-Victoire
The Card Players
Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses)
The Large Bathers
Why Is This Woman in the Jungle? Henri Rousseau’s The Dream
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, At the Moulin Rouge
Sculpture
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Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux​, Dance
Auguste Rodin
The Walking Man
The Burghers of Calais
The Gates of Hell
Wilfredo Prieto on Auguste Rodin’s sculptures
Claudel, The Age of Maturity
A moment’s monument, Medardo Rosso, Ecce puer (Behold the Child)
Symbolism / Art Nouveau
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Art Nouveau
The Nabis and Symbolism
The Nabis and Decorative Art
Gustave Moreau, Salome
Arnold Böcklin, Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle
Antoni Gaudí
Sagrada Família
Park Güell
James Ensor, Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889
Fernand Khnopff
Jeanne Kéfer
I Lock my Door Upon Myself
Franz von Stuck, The Sin
Hector Guimard, Cité entrance, Métropolitain, Paris
Gustav Klimt
Beethoven Frieze
 The Kiss
Death and Life
Broncia Koller, Sitting (Seated Nude Marietta)
Edvard Munch
The Storm
The Scream
Léon Bakst, “Costume design for the ballet The Firebird”
Louis Comfort Tiffany
Vase
Hair Ornament
Peredvizhniki
An Introduction to The Peredvizhniki (The Wanderers)
Ilya Repin, Krestny Khod (Religious Procession) in Kursk Gubernia
Textiles
Shawl from Deneirouse and Boisglavy

Edgar Degas, The Dance Class

by Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris

Edgar Degas, The Dance Class,, 1874, oil on canvas, (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) 

Smarthistory images for teaching and learning:
Degas Dance Lesson detail with DancerDegas Dance Lesson detail with TeacherDegas Dance Lesson detail with Center DancerDegas Dance Lesson

More Smarthistory images…

Cite this page as: Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris, "Edgar Degas, The Dance Class," in Smarthistory, November 25, 2015, accessed May 17, 2022, https://smarthistory.org/edgar-degas-the-dance-class/.

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Bank of America's Masterpiece Moment

Hasegawa Tōhaku, Pine Trees

with Masami Zenyia, Executive Director of the Tokyo National Museum

Crafted in the 16th century, this pair of six-panel screens is painted in ink on paper and showcases both Yamato-e and Chinese painting styles. The work features pine trees―a typical Japanese motif―and it has beautifully captured the richness of a Japanese landscape.

Watch the video
Learn more about Bank of America's Masterpiece Moment Close

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At Smarthistory we believe art has the power to transform lives and to build understanding across cultures. We believe that the brilliant histories of art belong to everyone, no matter their background. Smarthistory’s free, award-winning digital content unlocks the expertise of hundreds of leading scholars, making the history of art accessible and engaging to more people, in more places, than any other publisher.

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