Click on an artwork to enlarge it and see a quote from The Painted Girls.
Mlle Fiocre in the Ballet “La source,” ca. 1867-68 / p. 18 “‘Monsieur Degas, an artist,’ Antoinette said. ‘He’s at the Opéra day and night, all the time sketching away. Ballet girls most of the time. He painted Eugenie Fiocre once.’ ‘An étoile,’ Charlotte said. ‘She married a marquis.’ It was a story all of Paris knew, one that kept the charwomen and sewing maids and wool carders sending their daughters to the dance school. The laundresses, too.” 
Little Dancer Aged Fourteen / p. 250 “He waved a hand, and I followed with my eyes to his statuette, two thirds the size of me in real life, and my breath quickened that he had not given up. I walked closer, taking in the canvas ballet slippers, the tarlatan skirt, the leek green ribbon tied in a bow around the thick plait of what looked to be a wig of real hair. The skin was smooth or rough, uneven in colour, deep honey on the face, reddish-brown on the legs, all of it formed from a substance neither polished nor dull, opaque nor clear, soft nor hard. Wax, I decided, thinking of the way it bled down the sides of candles, hardening as it cooled, always changing shape, even, on a hot day, without the heat of a lit wick. There was a thin film of the same covering the hair; and tinted yellow, covering the bodice; tinted red, coving the slippers. No stone. No bronze. No porcelain. Only wax. Temporary. Cut-rate. And what was Monsieur Degas meaning, dressing up the statuette in real clothes and worse, a wig of real hair? Was it woven together from the sold tresses of a starving girl? The clipped locks of the dead? That freakish doll’s body—the skinny limbs, the too-large elbows and knees, the ridges of muscle sticking out from the thighs and the collarbones jutting below the neck—was no longer like my own. But in the face—the low forehead, the apish jaw, the broad cheekbones, the small half-closed eyes—the statuette was the mirror of me. The only mercy—Monsieur Degas hid my teeth behind closed lips…. I looked into the statuette’s face, and I saw longing, ambition, pride. Her chin tilted up, and it seemed a mistake, too hopeful, on such a face. Such an ugly, monkey face. I turned away, still feeling small half-closed eyes upon my back.” 
A Coryphée Resting, ca. 1880-82 / p. 62 “There is no more to the picture than a few lines of charcoal, a few dashes of pastel, but the exhaustion of the girl is there, in the ribs heaving with each breath, the late night and bellowing father of the evening before, also the long hours at the barre, striving to balance a second longer or land a little softer, the aching thighs rolling open even at rest.” 
Dancer with a Fan, ca. 1880 / p.78 “The hard part was the way he had one of my hands holding up a fan and the other reached around the back of my head like I was massaging my neck. It was the kind of picture he liked to make—a ballet girl hot and tired in the practice room and taking a second to fan herself while awaiting her turn.” 
Three Studies of a Nude Dancer, ca. 1878-79 / p. 82 “He clears the patch of table just beside me and moves a sheet of grey wove paper showing three views of me to the spot. In a few scribbles, I am drawn, once from the back, once from the side, once from the front, always naked, always standing with my feet in fourth position, my hands clasped behind my back…. Monsieur Lefebvre’s gaze lingers on the wove paper, lingers long. Eventually he removes his gloves and reaches a long finger toward the drawings. It quivers, hovering over the spine of the one showing me from the rear, then lands, tracing the curve of the charcoal line from between my shoulder blades until it is lost in the fleshiness of the rump.” 
Dancer with a Fan, ca. 1880 / p.78 “The hard part was the way he had one of my hands holding up a fan and the other reached around the back of my head like I was massaging my neck. It was the kind of picture he liked to make—a ballet girl hot and tired in the practice room and taking a second to fan herself while awaiting her turn.” 
Dancer Resting, ca. 1878-79 / p. 125 “And there I was, on the far wall, in pastel and black chalk—two legs, two feet, two arms—reading the newspaper beside the stove in Monsieur Degas’s workshop. I wore my practice skirt and the blue sash I bought with my bakery money and you could make out the braid running atop my head that it had taken me a good half hour to get right. There were bracelets upon my forearms, which was strange when I did not own a single one.” 
Dance Examination, 1880 / p. 152 “In the next picture, a dancer bends forward at the hips to straighten her stockings, and another, with a shock of red hair and a face turned to the floor, looks like she is stretching out her toes, but it is impossible to know because a good half of her foot is chopped off, and this time, the top of her head, too. Behind the dancers, fluffing the tarlatan of her daughter’s skirt is the mother, with the puffy face of an old concierge, and her friend, rough with her raw nose and plume of feathers bristling from her hat.” 
Toilette, ca. 1879 / p. 152 “And last, a wash basin and a pitcher and a woman in black stockings and nothing more, pulling a dress over her head. Her backside is plump, soft, spread beneath the fleshy folds of her waist. She is no laundress or concierge, no milliner or wool carder. The shadow of her stockings lurches the mind from decent work, and only a whore slips on a dress with her backside still bare.” 
Cabaret, ca. 1876-77 / p. 311 “A singer at a café concert, one with a vulgar face, leaning over, her open mouth and plunging neckline taunting the men crowding the stage.” 
Woman Ironing, ca. 1876-1887 / p. 311 “A woman, bent over a hot iron.” 
Room in a Brothel, ca. 1879 / p.311 “Another woman, this time, lumpy and naked, scratching at her backside in what has to be the salon of a brothel. Each is caught being who she is in everyday life. I look hard at the woman scratching away. She is exactly herself in the picture, not some other woman, one made up by the men usually visiting with her.” 
The Dance Lesson, ca. 1879 / p. 80 “In the painting, the girl sitting on a bench draws the eye. Her shawl is blaring red, and you can see misery welling up. She is off by herself for one thing, and she is hunched over, maybe even wiping away a tear. Maybe she cannot keep up with the class. Maybe her sister came in late the night before, when already the grey light of morning was slipping through the shutter slats. Maybe she heard her laughing in the stairwell, saying to a boy that, yes, on Sunday afternoon, those few free hours allowed the working girls of Paris, she would go to the Rat Mort when that woeful girl wanted her sister to spend the time with her. Maybe she woke up to the noise of her mother vomiting up absinthe.” 
Criminal Physiognomies, ca. 1880-81 / p. 311 “I let out a little gasp to see Emile Abadie alongside Michel Knobloch, each caught in profile in the prisoners’ box at the court. The boys in the picture, by their looks, anyone would say they are beasts. No one would guess a mistake was made. But, I know.” 
Preparatory Sketches / p. 78 “He began a set of drawings—simple drawings, lines of charcoal with a touch of white pastel—with my finger resting on my chin; with my arms spread wide and holding my skirt; with a hand upon the fallen strap of my bodice, as if pulling it up. Sometimes he wanted my hair off my neck, up in a chignon. Sometimes he liked it hanging down my back in a braid or even loose, collected over a shoulder. As often as not, I was naked. The part that never changed was always he wanted my feet in fourth position, and I began to wonder if that was the great idea he was thinking up while he stared at that picture of me with the fan: That I would stand in fourth position and he would draw me a hundred times.” 
Two Ballet Girls, ca. 1879 / p. 152 “Two dancers sit collapsed upon a bench, their bent knees parted, their tired legs turned out from the hips, even as they catch their breaths.”
