Study for Little Dancer Aged Fourteen
Artist: Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917)
Date: 1919-1921
Dimensions:
H: 28 1/2 in. (72.4 cm);
Base) L: 13 in. (33 cm); W: 10 in. (25.4 cm)
Medium: Bronze
Classification: Sculpture
Credit Line: Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey
Object number: 1950.246
Label Text:Though Edgar Degas made dozens of wax sculptures (most of which were cast into bronze after his death), the only one he ever exhibited publicly was Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, now in the National Gallery of Art (see illustration). Dressed in a cloth bodice, tutu, and wig of real hair, the sculpture shocked critics with its inelegant subject and doll-like materials. Toledo’s sculpture is a bronze cast of a wax study for the groundbreaking finished figure.
The young model, Marie van Goethem, was the daughter of a widowed laundress and lived near Degas’s Montmartre studio in Paris. She belonged to the corps de ballet of the Paris Opéra, whose members were frequent subjects for Degas. Degas made his nude wax study in order to work out the difficulties of the pose and the awkward adolescent body. Look for the line around the neck suggesting that he tilted the head back more than he had planned, causing the wax to crack.
[image caption]
Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, yellow wax, hair, ribbon, linen bodice, satin shoes, muslin tutu, wood base, 1878–1881. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon. ©National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
The young model, Marie van Goethem, was the daughter of a widowed laundress and lived near Degas’s Montmartre studio in Paris. She belonged to the corps de ballet of the Paris Opéra, whose members were frequent subjects for Degas. Degas made his nude wax study in order to work out the difficulties of the pose and the awkward adolescent body. Look for the line around the neck suggesting that he tilted the head back more than he had planned, causing the wax to crack.
[image caption]
Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, yellow wax, hair, ribbon, linen bodice, satin shoes, muslin tutu, wood base, 1878–1881. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon. ©National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
On view
In Collection(s)