The Dance Class, an oil on canvas dated 1874, is one of Edgar Degas's earliest fully realized treatments of the ballet-rehearsal theme that would occupy him for the rest of his career, staged here with the asymmetric, off-center composition and elevated viewpoint that became his signature. The picture predates the looser pastel technique of his later dance subjects, showing instead a more conventional, tightly finished oil surface. It entered the collection comparatively late, through the bequest of Mrs. Harry Payne Bingham in 1986, more than a century after it was painted. Scion notes that even a long gap between creation and a work's entry into public institutional record is not itself a defect, provided — as here — that the eventual chain of ownership is clearly documented.