Portrait of Mlle Fiocre in the Ballet "La Source"

Portrait of Mademoiselle Fiocre in the Ballet 'La Source' (1867), at the Brooklyn Museum, was exhibited at the Salon of 1868 and represents Degas's earliest major engagement with the ballet as a subject. Eugénie Fiocre was one of the Paris Opéra's star ballerinas of the 1860s, and Degas depicts her not in performance but in a staged resting scene between scene changes in La Source — sitting beside a pool with attendants and a horse, the orientalist stage set fully present. This early canvas is both a portrait and a theatrical genre scene, anticipating the backstage focus that would define his mature work.

The 1867 date places this firmly in Degas's pre-Impressionist phase, and the handling shows the influence of his intensive study of historical painting: the figures are carefully modelled with classical precision, the orientalist landscape setting depicted with descriptive detail, and the overall tonality controlled within a narrower range than his later work.