The White Ballet

Everett Shinn, The White Ballet, 1904, oil on canvas, 29 ¹⁄₂ x 36 ³⁄₄ in. (74.9 x 93.3 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by the American Art Forum and the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment , 2004.4

Artwork Details

Title: The White Ballet
Artist: Everett Shinn
Date: 1904
Location: Smithsonian American Art Museum
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2nd Floor
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East Wing
Dimensions: 29 ¹⁄₂ x 36 ³⁄₄ in. (74.9 x 93.3 cm)
Credit Line: Museum purchase made possible by the American Art Forum and the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment
Mediums Description: oil on canvas
Classifications: Painting
Subjects: Figure group
Performing arts — dance — ballet
Architecture Interior — civic — theater
Recreation — theater — ballet
Object Number: 2004.4
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/2004.4

Artwork Description

Everett Shinn and many of his contemporaries spent their early years as newspaper illustrators, learning, as he said, to "observe...and get the job done." For The White Ballet, he used his reportorial eye and the compositional devices of Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec to capture what he called "the uptown life." Cropped views of the orchestra pit and the stage collapse the distance between the spectators and the show, and dramatic lighting puts the viewer in the thick of the action. At the turn of the twentieth century, theatres of all kinds thrived in America's cities, providing public arenas where the rich and the wage-earners alike could see and be seen. Shinn embraced the spectacle of urban life, and once said that although he often looked to "night courts, dives, docks and dance halls" for his subjects, the lives of the well-to-do and the "sweep of furs and swish of wild boas" provided his most exciting themes.

Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006