Edgar Degas (1834-1917, after): The little fourteen-year-old dancer, green and brown patinated bronze on a wooden base, 20th C.

H 100 - 93,5 cm (with and without base)

The little fourteen-year-old dancer is a sculpture begun ca. 1880 by Edgar Degas of a young student of the Paris Opera Ballet dance school, a Belgian named Marie van Goethem (link). Degas’s sketches of Marie indicate his intense concentration on her form. The artist frequented the Opéra, making endless studies of dancers in motion and at rest. In the bronze, his model has adopted a classic ballet stance, with her right leg advanced and turned. Yet there is a deliberate awkwardness to the pose —  in the uncompromising way that the arms jut down behind and the head tilts back; moreover, the features of this precocious adolescent are far from pretty. Unorthodox yet riveting, Degas’s Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer became an instant icon in the history of sculpture.The original is nowadays part of the collection of the Met Museum, accession number: 29.100.370 (link).

The work here offered is a lost wax casting by O.E.Z. in California, with a limited edition of 24 ex. A certificate is added to this lot.