Painted on cardboard, an ephemeral material, Edgar Degas vividly captures this scene of dancers performing their daily exercises, the trace of the brushstrokes still evident. Degas has traditionally been associated with the French Impressionists, who pioneered a new artistic language to record the world around them. Like many avant-garde artists of his day, Degas looked to the leisure activities of the bourgeoisie or middle class for inspiration, as well as the working lives of laundresses, sex workers and ballerinas. His compositions of dancers show his studies of the human body — in poses ranging from intense activity to quieter moments of rest.

Degas was among the first of the French artists to obsessively collect Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints and albums in the mid-1860s. He was drawn to the use of line and unusual compositions in ukiyo-e prints, as well as to their subjects, which were often ordinary scenes from contemporary life. Their influence emerged in the style and subject matter of much modern French art of this era.

The artist was also a keen amateur photographer and many of his seemingly instantaneous and arbitrary compositions were formed by his view through the camera lens.