Degas’s father was an accomplished organist, and the artist had a deep love and appreciation of music. During the 1870s he frequently attended rehearsals of the orchestra and ballet of the Paris Opéra, sketching the performers at work, often as preparatory studies for paintings. This study is for the violinist in The Rehearsal, a painting of a ballet practice now in the Frick Collection, New York. Although sketchy and spontaneous, the drawing is rich in tonal variations and bold line, the fall of light rendered with accents of white chalk. Degas captures with remarkable facility the progression of arms and instrument as they move from one position to the next.

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