1898, Edgar Degas, The Dancers [pastel] -- Los Angeles County Museum of Art

From the museum label: After spending much of the 1860s studying the movement of racehorses—racetracks were then a popular site for the bourgeoisie—Edgar Degas turned his attention to the poses, gestures, and athleticism of ballet dancers. He devoted more than one thousand paintings, drawings, monotypes, and sculptures to this subject matter. The son of a banker, Degas had a vastly different upbringing than those of the ballet dancers he so carefully observed; many of the teenage students, referred to as "little rats," came from poverty and endured grueling hours of training. As this vibrant pastel underscores, rather than idealizing the ballerinas' grace, Degas, with an eye for realism, depicted them waiting in the wings—catching their breath, adjusting costumes, stretching, waiting for their cue. Truncating and cropping their bodies, his tight compositional framing reveals the influence of photography and the cinema.

Done