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Lot Essay
This elegantly poised figure is Degas’s most fully resolved and finely finished statement on a theme to which he returned repeatedly during the last two decades of his career–that of a nude model who balances on her left leg as she bends to inspect the sole of her right foot. “This subject is often considered one of Degas’s most inspired and audacious sculptural inventions,” Richard Kendall has written. “Movement is fused with stability, precariousness with momentary equilibrium, in a succession of forms that animate both the human body and the flurry of space around it” (op. cit., 1996, n.p.).
Although this figure has traditionally been titled a danseuse, only the delicate balance required to sustain the stance connects the sculpture explicitly to the ballet. Degas’s model Pauline, who narrated a memoir to Alice Michel sometime after 1910, recalled that it was an especially taxing pose to assume. “Standing on her left foot,” Michel recounted, “knee slightly flexed, she raised her other foot behind her with a vigorous movement, capturing her toes in her right hand, then turned her head to look at the sole of that foot as she raised her left elbow high to regain her balance” (quoted in S.G. Lindsay et al., op. cit., 2010, p. 231). The pose has loose classical precedent in sculptures of Nike or Aphrodite adjusting a sandal and the latter nursing a wound. Most of these show the goddess reaching across her body to grasp her foot with the opposite hand; in Degas’s version, by contrast, the model holds her foot with the hand on the same side, carrying the lateral imbalance of the precarious posture to the extreme.
In addition to the present sculpture, Degas modeled at least three variants on the same pose, all more summarily handled and probably later (Rewald, nos. XLIX, LX, and LXI). Pauline noted a further example that collapsed from an inadequate armature and another that the artist abandoned midway; the motif appears too in numerous pastels and drawings. “It is essential to do the same subject over again, ten times, a hundred times,” Degas declared (quoted in Degas: Beyond Impressionism, exh. cat., The Art Institute of Chicago, 1996, p. 186). The Danseuse offered here is noteworthy for the careful rendering of details such as the facial features, the toes, and the folds of the flesh, as well as for the abundant sweep of hair that cascades over the right shoulder, emphasizing the twisting motion of the body.
Degas himself evidently considered this sculpture one of his most significant achievements in three dimensions. Of the several dozen wax figurines that he modeled over the course of his career, it is one of only three that he is known to have had cast in the more durable medium of plaster, being famously reluctant to declare his work complete. Contemporary accounts indicate that he proudly displayed the plaster Danseuse in a large glass cabinet in his studio, where it was visible to visiting dealers, colleagues, and friends.
Although this figure has traditionally been titled a danseuse, only the delicate balance required to sustain the stance connects the sculpture explicitly to the ballet. Degas’s model Pauline, who narrated a memoir to Alice Michel sometime after 1910, recalled that it was an especially taxing pose to assume. “Standing on her left foot,” Michel recounted, “knee slightly flexed, she raised her other foot behind her with a vigorous movement, capturing her toes in her right hand, then turned her head to look at the sole of that foot as she raised her left elbow high to regain her balance” (quoted in S.G. Lindsay et al., op. cit., 2010, p. 231). The pose has loose classical precedent in sculptures of Nike or Aphrodite adjusting a sandal and the latter nursing a wound. Most of these show the goddess reaching across her body to grasp her foot with the opposite hand; in Degas’s version, by contrast, the model holds her foot with the hand on the same side, carrying the lateral imbalance of the precarious posture to the extreme.
In addition to the present sculpture, Degas modeled at least three variants on the same pose, all more summarily handled and probably later (Rewald, nos. XLIX, LX, and LXI). Pauline noted a further example that collapsed from an inadequate armature and another that the artist abandoned midway; the motif appears too in numerous pastels and drawings. “It is essential to do the same subject over again, ten times, a hundred times,” Degas declared (quoted in Degas: Beyond Impressionism, exh. cat., The Art Institute of Chicago, 1996, p. 186). The Danseuse offered here is noteworthy for the careful rendering of details such as the facial features, the toes, and the folds of the flesh, as well as for the abundant sweep of hair that cascades over the right shoulder, emphasizing the twisting motion of the body.
Degas himself evidently considered this sculpture one of his most significant achievements in three dimensions. Of the several dozen wax figurines that he modeled over the course of his career, it is one of only three that he is known to have had cast in the more durable medium of plaster, being famously reluctant to declare his work complete. Contemporary accounts indicate that he proudly displayed the plaster Danseuse in a large glass cabinet in his studio, where it was visible to visiting dealers, colleagues, and friends.