Learn More About Degas's Sculpture
Author's Note
Petite danseuse de quartorze ans—Little Dancer Aged Fourteen—is the only sculpture Edgar Desgas ever exhibited during his lifetime, although in the years that followed the 1881 Sixth Exhibition of Independent Artists, he created many more small sculptures of his favorite subjects: dancers, horses, and women bathing. He considered the sculptures studies for his pictures, not works of art in themselves, and showed them only to his friends and to other artists.
Degas was among a group of late nineteenth-century painters living in Paris who rebelled against the rigidity of the standards by which French art was judged. The painters were labeled impressionists by a disgruntled art critic who ridiculed their use of light and color as well as the content of their work. Degas's artist-friends included Édouard Manet, Paul Cézanne, Aguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Camille Pisarro, Gustave Caillebotte, and of course, the American artist Mary Cassatt—whose status as a woman prohibited her from frequenting the cafes where the others met to drink coffee, smoke, and plan their exhibitions.
Degas's reputation was well established, even before the exhibitions. His portraits, pictures of café life, and luminous portrayals of ballet dancers, which broke the old rules of perspective and balance, were much in demand by collectors. But his sculpture Petite danseuse shocked even his admirers and brought him both ridicule and praise.
When Degas's heirs visited his studio after his death, they found dozens of small sculptures in wax and clay, most of them broken and badly deteriorated. The heirs chose seventy-three of the best-preserved pieces and took them to a maker of bronze castings who produced twenty-two sets of bronzes, using the complex lost wax process. Today about thirteen hundred individual bronzes ca be accounted for, including, of course, sever copies of the Little Dancer, always in a real tutu. These bronzes are part of major museums' collections throughout the world.
Although photographs of Degas's most famous masterpiece appear in art books, they cannot compare with the sculpture itself. I first saw Petite danseuse at an exhibition in Rochester, New York in December 2002, and was immediately entranced by it. I still am.
Numerous books have been written about Edgar Degas, but little is known of Marie van Goethem and her family. No historical evidence of her life, or of Antoinette's exists following Antoinette's arrest and imprisonment and Marie's dismissal from the Paris Opera. Only Charlotte continued her career in ballet, moving up through the ranks to become a sujet. In 1907 Charlotte van Goethem ended her career as a dancer and became a professor at the ballet school at the Opera she retired in 1933.
But the girl who was the model for Little Dancer continues to fascinate museumgoers, art historians, and contemporary dancers. In April 2003 a new ballet opened at the Palais Garnier titled La petite danseuse de Degas—created by Martine Kahne, archivist and curator, and Patrice Bart, choreographer, both of the Paris Opéra. At last, 122 years later, Marie became un étoile, a star.
When Degas's sculpture Little Dancer Aged Fourteen was first revealed, the audience was not expecting the piece to so realistically show the stress, strain, and tension of a ballerina's life. The original work, now exhibited in the Louvre in Paris, was created in wax in about 1880-1881. It was made even more lifelike by Degas's special additional touches: ballet shoes, a real bodice covered in wax, a tutu of muslin, and a wig made of hair and tied with a silk ribbon. This version, cast in bronze in the 1920s from the original wax sculpture, is painted and adorned with muslin and silk.
Related Links
Degas's bronze scultpures at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Biography of Degas at Microsoft Encarta.
More information about Degas's life from Wikipedia.
Copyright © 2005 by Carolyn Meyer
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