Degas is chiefly associated with the female figure, more often represented bathing or similar ablutions as well as the ballet. These subjects he addressed with a remarkable sense of realism for which Degas’ work is rightly renowned. But it was also his pursuit of realism that so offended ‘polite society’ and it was often rather too shocking for his contemporary audience. Degas was fascinated by the everyday unobserved movements of his subject. The ability to capture the event offers a deeper intimacy with the subject. The ballerina presented Degas with complexity in composition. The unconventional pose afforded the opportunity to heighten the sense of a female figure in motion. Degas was as obsessed with capturing the body in motion as he was by the art of classical ballet. Through ballet Degas was able to explore broader themes about the human condition and the harsh realities of modern life. Although he exhibited with the Impressionists, Degas preferred to be called a realist. [5] The title of the work was given by Degas and is quite typical in the way he applied quite precise everyday descriptive titles.

The original version of Little Dancer Aged Fourteen exhibited by Degas was made in wax and clay, whereas this example is cast in bronze. After Degas’ death, his heirs (his brother and sister’s children) made the decision to have the wax sculpture cast in bronze. [6] Degas’ sculptures have survived in three forms: wax originals, which were repaired shortly after his death in 1917 (now mostly in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC); a master (modèle) set of bronzes made in 1919 from modified waxes by the Hébrard Foundry (now in the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena); and a series of ‘Hébrard’ bronze casts made from the master bronzes from 1919 to 1936 and again from 1955 to 1964 (dispersed among museums and private collections). This example in the Sainsbury Centre Collection is from the 1919-36 set of ‘Hébrard’ bronzes of which there are thought to be at least 29 and thought to have been made in c1922.[7] These early casts were dressed in tutus and hair ribbons by Degas’ niece, Jeanne Fevre. [8]

It is likely Degas started work on drawings and the nude version of the Little Dancer at some point after February 1878, when Maria was fourteen. This continued during 1879 and up until the spring of 1880 when it had been his intention to show it at the Fifth Impressionist Exhibition of 1880 in Paris. Whether this was a nude version or clothed is not entirely clear. Either it was not ready or least Degas was uncertain about it as in fact it never appeared. Only the glass case that Degas had built for it was displayed, enigmatically left empty throughout the exhibition. [9]

The Little Dancer was actually shown at the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition of 1881. The now dressed figure was received with astonishment because of its unusual character. This was further exacerbated as the sculpture arrived several days late. The critic and author Joris-Karl Huysmans thought he had seen the first truly modern attempt at sculpture:

‘The chief attraction of his exhibition is not , this year, to be found among his drawings or paintings……it is one single wax figure….from which the public, quite bewildered and embarrassed, run away. The frightful realism of this statuette evidently makes people uncomfortable; all its ideas on sculpture, on those cold, inanimate white objects, on those memorable imitations copied over and over since centuries, are upset. The fact is that, at one blow, Mr. Degas has overthrown the traditions of sculpture as he long ago weakened the conventions of painting.’ [10]

This level of realism was considered shocking and polarised its original audience, who were accustomed to more idealised representations of the human body. Some critics and many general observers were deeply shocked by the sculpture. This was not an idealised form of classical sculpture that spectators were accustomed too. Many felt that it all too real and animalistic in its rawness. This feeling was perhaps heightened by Degas’s decision to display the sculpture in a glass case, which to his audience would have felt more appropriate for scientific specimens or a cabinet of curiosities. He also dressed the sculpture in real clothes. The version of the Little Dancer that Degas exhibited in 1881 was made of pigmented beeswax and clay over a metal armature. Startling of all, it had real human hair and was dressed in a cotton faille bodice, cotton and silk tutu, silk and linen ribbon, linen slippers. This was all coated in a thin layer of wax that Degas tinted to enhance the illusion of life. Realistic wax effigies or figures appeared in the middle ages as funerary practice. By the 19th century a popular form of waxworks or wax museums appeared in Europe. It was perhaps this element, an afront to art and good taste that made Degas’ sculpture so controversial. Some critics compared it disparagingly to Madame Tussaud’s waxworks. “Can art descend lower?” one anonymous writer asked. [11] The art critic Paul Mantz described the dancer as a “flower of precocious depravity,” with a “face marked by the hateful promise of every vice.” Mantz further exposed the prejudice against ballet dancers in general: “With bestial effrontery,” he wrote, “she moves her face forward, or rather her little muzzle — and this word is completely correct because the little girl is the beginning of a rat.” [12]

The subject matter is challenging today not because of its perceived reality, instead because of the sexual exploration that was endemic in the ballet which in Paris of the time was almost entirely predicated on a lecherous misogynist world. The spectator today is faced with a dilemma of applying standards of our own time to the realities of 19th century. Then, sex work was a part of a ballerina’s reality, and the city’s opera house, the Palais Garnier, was designed with this in mind. A luxuriously appointed room located behind the stage, called the foyer de la danse, was a place where the dancers would warm up before performances. But it also served wealthy male subscribers to the opera, who could conduct business, socialize and proposition the ballerinas.[13] The unbalanced power dynamic was a reality of life for the young ballerinas. They entered the academy as children, derisively called petits rats, came from working-class or impoverished backgrounds. They often joined the ballet to support their families, working gruelling, six-day weeks. Their earnings and careers were beholden to the men prowling backstage. They were expected to submit to the affections of these subscribers, and could be coerced into such relationships with the prospect of financial reward. Although Degas was not directly associated with the sexual exploitation, the foyer de la danse was of great interest to him and he depicted it often. He also demanded his models pose for hours at a time, enduring excruciating discomfort as they held their contorted positions. He wanted to capture his “little monkey girls,” as he called them, “cracking their joints” at the barre. “I have perhaps too often considered woman as an animal,” he once told the painter Pierre Georges Jeanniot in a moment of revealing honesty. [15]

In 1903, the collector Louisine Havemeyer visited Degas with the artist Mary Cassatt and asked to purchase the wax version of the Little dancer. Degas considered the idea of making a cleaner wax copy or casting it in bronze, but Havemeyer wished only to obtain the original, with which the artist was unwilling to part.[16] After his death in 1917, many of the sculptures including the Little Dancer, were damaged or in a fragmentary condition in his studio. A friend of Degas, the sculptor Paul-Albert Bartholomé, helped select and repair seventy-two of these for a limited-edition series of bronzes. The Paris foundry A. A. Hébrard, which specialized in lost-wax casting, was instructed to avoid cleaning up the sculptures before taking the moulds. [16] This work was underway by 1919 although the first bronze cast of this work was not made until late 1922. [17] The quality of the Hébrard bronzes is celebrated and the master founder, Albino Palazzolo was awarded the Legion of Honor in recognition of the skill. With Cassatt’s help, Havemeyer secured the first cast of the bronzes and gave sixty-nine of them to The Metropolitan Museum in New York. Since the gelatin moulds were damaged in the process, these first bronzes retain details lost in subsequent casts. Details such as the texture of the wax-covered hair and bodice to flaws like the crack in the dancer’s left arm. [18]

The Sainsbury Centre 1922 Hébrard cast was purchased by Robert and Lisa Sainsbury from Wildenstein & Co. London in 1938. It was donated to the Sainsbury Centre, University of East Anglia in 1973 as part of the original gift. There is a bronze foundry plaque on the right rear of the base and a cast of Degas signature. The foundry stamp also appears on the figure’s upper left thigh. Cire Perdu A.A. Herard

Calvin Winner, February 2022

References

[1] J. Rewald, Degas, Works in Sculpture: A complete Catalogue, Pantheon books 1944, p.7-8

[2] https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/degas-little-dancer-aged-fourteen-n06076 Accessed 11/02/2022

[3] Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery Modern Collection, 1981, p.149

[4] Alley, p.149

[5] the critic Jules Claretie in 1881 coined the phrase impressionist sculptors (sculpteurs impression{n}istes)) Chris Stephens, Holbourne Museum correspondence May 2021, Sainsbury centre archives

[6] https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.110310.html Accessed 11/02/2022

[7] Recorded in Sainsbury Centre archives as c1922

[8] Steven Hooper (Ed), Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection, Yale University press, 1997, p.186

[9] Theodore Reff, Degas the artist’s mind, Thames and Hudson 1976, p.242

[10] J. Rewald, p.7-8]

[11] https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/edgar-degas-ballet-dancers-artsy/index.html Accessed 11/02/2022

[12] J. Rewald, p.7

[13] https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/edgar-degas-ballet-dancers-artsy/index.html Accessed 11/02/2022

[14] https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.110292.html Accessed 11/02/2022

[15] https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/edgar-degas-ballet-dancers-artsy/index.html Accessed 11/02/2022

[16] https://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-met/conservation-and-scientific-research/conservation-stories/2020/degas-dancer Accessed 11/02/2022

[17] Alley p.150

[18] https://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-met/conservation-and-scientific-research/conservation-stories/2020/degas-dancer Accessed 11/02/2022

This singular work was the only sculpture exhibited by Degas in his lifetime, and John Rewald, in his catalogue raisonné of the artist’s sculpture, emphasised the works position as an experience that had to be approached and not as a vein to be worked’, concluding that it wasnot only to remain alone among Degas sculptures, but was also to find no imitators. In the history of modern sculpture it occupies a place by itself’ (Rewald, 1944: 8). Although, more recently, efforts have beenmade to place the sculpture firmly in the context of Degas’s oeuvre, Little Dancer remains, in almost all respects, an extraordinary work.

The original wax version (now in the collection of Mr and Mrs Paul Mellon) was listed in the catalogue of the Impressionist exhibition of 1880, but was not actually exhibited until the following year, when its aggressive realism occasioned considerable comment, much of it un-favourable. About two-thirds life-size, the original wax girl is dressed in real clothes – bodice, skirt, stockings, shoes – with a silk hair ribbon adorning a wig. The translucent wax was tinted to render the sculptureeven more life-like. These startling adornments are modified only by a thin layer of wax that Degas laid over the clothes and hair to integrate them with the head, shoulders and arms. In an age when propriety was an especially esteemed quality, many found the sculpture s uncompromising naturalism utterly unacceptable. Even the model, a Belgian girl named Marie van Goethem, who, to modern eyes, seems an endearingly pert teenager, came in for special abuse. One critic railed : Wishing to present us with a statuette of a dancer, he has chosen among the most odiously ugly… Oh certainly, at the very bottom of the barrel of the dance school, there are some poor girls who look like this young monster. .. but what good are they in terms of statuary? Put them in a museum of zoology, of anthropology, of physiology, all right: but in an art museum, really!’ (in Millard, 1976: 123; author’s translation).

In presenting the sculpture in a glass case in 1881 (Degas had exhibited the case empty the previous year), the artist was alluding to display methods more common in Natural History museums than art exhibitions. In a sense, Degas was displaying the girl as a specimen, and may have been asking whether such a thoroughgoing pursuit of Realism, the artistic order of the day, took sculpture out of the realm of art. Degas’s profound questioning of the nature of sculpture was noted, sympathetically, by the critic and author of naturalist novels, J. K. Huysmans: ‘The terrible realism of this statuette makes the public distinctly uneasy : all its ideas about sculpture, about cold, lifeless whiteness, about those memorable formulas copied again and again for centuries, are demolished. The fact is that on the first blow, M. Degas has knocked over the traditions of sculpture, just as he has for a long time been shaking up the conventions of painting… At once refined and barbaric … this statuette is the only truly modern attempt I know in sculpture’ (quoted in Millard, 1976: 124; author’s translation). This ‘terrible realism’ was moderated in the bronze version, where only tutu and ribbon were of fabric, and the tutu itself, instead of being white, was painted a greyish green, once again to bring it in harmony with the rest of the sculpture. Whatever the modifications, in both wax and bronze, Little Dancer is an audacious essay that over one hundred years after its creation retains the ability to startle and delight. At some stage the arms of the wax version fell off and, although reattached, the resultant fractures are clearly visible in the cast, as are similar fissures on both knees. The earliest casts were made in 1922 by Hebrard, and the figures were dressed by Degas’s niece, Jeanne Fevre. The exact edition is not known, but may exceed by as many as three the usual number of twenty-two (see Boggs, 1988: 350-53, for discussion of the edition and an illustration of the wax version). There are two plaster versions, both in the U.S.A.; one in the Mellon Collection in the National Gallery, Washington, D.C., the other in the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska.

The white ribbon original to this cast disintegrated, and was replacedwith the present material by the Hampton Court Textiles Conservation Laboratory, who have also made a replica tutu, to preserve the originalfrom damage during exhibition loans (see Cassar, 1988a. 1988b).