Throughout his life, one subject preoccupied Degas more than any other; capturing the human form in motion. His intensely observed depictions of female figures cover a vast range of attitudes, including dancing, bathing and stretching. They dominate his œuvre and span a wealth of media including oil paintings, pencil, chalk drawings and pastels (fig. 1). However, it was in sculpture that Degas found a medium that allowed him to most freely express the intricacies of the seemingly boundless range of movement of the body and the shifting space around it. In these sculptures, Degas pulls away from the decorative element of the ballet to focus purely on the dancers and their movement. He arrives at the absolute essential of the body and its gestural power.
In describings the pose of the present work, art historian Gary Tinterow notes: ‘While the majority of Degas’s dance sculptures capture fleeting moments of movement or disequilibrium, this work is notable for the perfect balance of the figure and the dancer’s seemingly effortless control over her body’ (G. Tinterow in Degas (exhibition catalogue), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1988, p. 473). The technically challenging pose the dancer has adopted is matched by Degas’s skill in conveying the true balance of the body and its heft in an apparently effortless manner. The result invites the viewer to explore the aesthetic and anatomic stature of the dancer and to circle her in admiration for both her poise and Degas’s skill.
Degas’s highly original way of viewing and recording the ballet was mirrored in other visually and technologically inventive experiments of the t.mes . Eadweard Muybridge’s pioneering studies of motion (fig. 2) were a great inspiration to Degas, as was the work of the Lumière brothers who had begun to capture sequences of movement on film. Degas’s intention was not just to exhibit the beauty of ballet and its dancers but to capture a full sense of the movement of the figures. Rendering this on film or showing a sequence of action through photography provided Degas with a new way of capturing a single moment in t.mes and fully investigating the body’s place within it. In the same way that a camera could now capture the movement of a galloping horse or a flying bird, Degas’s sculpted variations on the theme of dance and movement allowed him to show the way in which the body of a dancer moved.
The sculpture of Degas stands outside the mainstream of nineteenth-century sculpture. Unlike his contemporaries, Degas showed no interest in creating public monuments and only one of his sculptures - Petite danseuse de quatorze ans (fig. 3) – was ever exhibited in public during his lifet.mes . Shown at the sixth Impressionist exhibition held in Paris in 1881, the work shocked viewers with its novel use of materials and the seemingly proud attitude of the model. Perhaps as a result of the public’s strong reaction to the stark naturalism of the Petite danseuse de quatorze ans, sculpture became a private pursuit for Degas. This did not stop his thirst for innovation, or his embrace of unconventional procedures merged with traditional techniques. To allow for malleability, he used a combination of pigmented wax and a modelling clay called plastilene which he applied over a wire armature that was further padded out with cork, rope or objects found in his studio. The immediacy of this material ensured the figures became a direct extension of his drawing and allowed him to revisit and remodel the compositions.
Upon the artist’s death in 1917, over 150 pieces of sculpture were found in Degas’s studio and in 1918 a selection of circa 70 sculptures was authorised for casting by the A.-A. Hébrard foundry in Paris. The series of twenty casts of each model were lettered A to T in addition to one for the Degas family heirs and another to be retained by the foundry. The present work, marked 6/B, belongs to one of the first sets to be completed and was purchased in its entirety by the Norwegian artist and collects or Walther Halvorsen. Subsequently sold to Mary Quinn Sullivan, one of the founding patrons of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the bronze became part of one of the most important collects ions of Modern and Contemporary Art in America at the t.mes . Other casts of this model are now to be found in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen.
