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Phillips Connections

 

Founder Duncan Phillips acquired his first Degas painting, Ballet Rehearsal (c. 1885–91), in 1928, during the museum's first decade. Phillips "adored that painting," says Chief Curator Eliza Rathbone. He often exhibited it and "had many years to enjoy it—'work with it,' as he would say—and to love it."

During the 1940s, Ballet Rehearsal was joined in the permanent collection by four other Degas works, including Melancholy (late 1860s), Women Combing Their Hair (1875–76), After the Bath (c. 1895), and Dancers at the Barre (early 1880s–c. 1900). Due to their great variety, Rathbone explains, these works were "extraordinarily representative of Degas's achievement—in medium, style, subject, and time period. With them, Phillips felt he had a small but extremely fine group of works." All but After the Bath are included in this exhibition.

With his Degas "unit" now assembled, Phillips donated Ballet Rehearsal to Yale University in 1952, just after the university's 250th anniversary. "Phillips felt it was a very significant gift to Yale," says Rathbone. "He cared deeply for his alma mater, and he thought it was greatly needed there. When he gifted a work of art, he always gave works by artists he valued highly." Still, she says, "he could only part with it because of the other four Degas works he had acquired.” Yale University Art Gallery has lent Ballet Rehearsal to The Phillips Collection for this exhibition, returning the painting to its former home for the first time since 1952.

In recent years, the small, superb Degas unit acquired by Duncan Phillips has been enhanced by two additional works: Seated Violin Player (1872), a bequest by June Carey in 1983, and Dance Rehearsal (1873), from an anonymous donor in 2006.

Ballet Rehearsal by Edgar Degas, oil on canvas

Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas, Ballet Rehearsal, c. 1885-91.