BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Gallery of Art -- West Wing -- Exhibit: Degas's Little Dancer

DC -- Natl Gallery of Art -- West Wing -- Exhibit: Degas's Little Dancer:

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Description of Pictures: Degas's Little Dancer
October 5, 2014 – January 11, 2015
Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (1878–1881), Edgar Degas’s groundbreaking statuette of a young ballerina that caused a sensation at the 1881 impressionist exhibition, takes center stage in an exploration of Degas’s fascination with ballet and his experimental, modern approach to his work. This exhibition is presented in conjunction with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ world-premiere musical Little Dancer, which runs from October 25 through November 30, 2014.
Degas was a keen observer and wry but sympathetic chronicler of the daily life of dancers, depicting their world off-stage, at rehearsal or in the wings. Degas’s Little Dancer showcases this world of gaslight and struggle, as captured by the master.
One of the Gallery’s most popular works of art, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen will be presented with 14 additional works from the Gallery’s collection, including the monumental pastel Ballet Scene (c. 1907), monotypes and smaller original statuettes by Degas that are related to Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. The exhibition also includes the oil painting The Dance Class (c. 1873) from the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
The National Gallery of Art has the largest and most important collection of Degas’s surviving original wax sculptures in the world. Its wax version of Little Dancer Aged Fourteen is the only one formed by the artist’s own hands and the only sculpture he ever showed publicly. Degas did not carve sculpture but used an additive process. Little Dancer Aged Fourteen was modeled in wax over a metal armature, bulked with organic materials including wood, rope, and even old paintbrushes in the arms. Degas elevated the sculpture’s realism by affixing a wig of human hair and giving his ballerina a cotton-and-silk tutu, a cotton faille bodice, and linen slippers.

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[1] NGADAC_141010_004.JPG	[2] NGADAC_141010_008.JPG	[3] NGADAC_141010_015.JPG
[4] NGADAC_141010_025.JPG	[5] NGADAC_141010_030.JPG	[6] NGADAC_141010_044.JPG
[7] NGADAC_141010_052.JPG	[8] NGADAC_141010_063.JPG	[9] NGADAC_141010_067.JPG
[10] NGADAC_141010_074.JPG	[11] NGADAC_141010_077.JPG	[12] NGADAC_141010_084.JPG
[13] NGADAC_141010_090.JPG	[14] NGADAC_141010_096.JPG	[15] NGADAC_141010_103.JPG
[16] NGADAC_141010_113.JPG	[17] NGADAC_141010_121.JPG	[18] NGADAC_141010_124.JPG
[19] NGADAC_141010_129.JPG	[20] NGADAC_141010_138.JPG	[21] NGADAC_141010_145.JPG
[22] NGADAC_141010_150.JPG	[23] NGADAC_141010_155.JPG	[24] NGADAC_141010_168.JPG
[25] NGADAC_141010_172.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. NGADAC_141010_008.JPG: Little Dancer Aged Fourteen: Little Dancer Aged Fourteen is the only sculpture is the only sculpture Edgar Degas ever exhibited in a lifetime of making three-dimensional work along with paintings, pastels and prints. The wax-and-clay statuette, dressed in cloth garments with a wig of human hair, appeared in the sixth impressionist exhibition in 1881. There it caused a sensation for its painstaking naturalism and controversial modern subject -- a working class ballet student poised on the brink of adulthood. Dancers who performed at the Paris Opera and the young students who trained there -- known as "opera rats" -- were a continuing source of inspiration for Degas. The model who posed for the statuette, Marie van Goethem (1865-?), came from a family of Belgian immigrants to Paris. Dance offered such girls a chance to escape from poverty, but also exposed them to the risk of exploitation by male patrons of the ballet. After a promising start, Marie was dismissed from the ballet in 1882, and her fate in unknown. Found in Degas's studio after his death in 1917, the original wax statuette -- the sole version Degas ever touched -- was cast afterwards in more than thirty bronze and two plaster versions. Conservation research, including x-radiography, has revealed how Degas build up Little Dancer over a metal armature, with a core bulked out with wood, robe, and padding, then covered with clay and finally with layers of translucent, pigmented wax to refine the details before the figure was dressed in actual clothing. The height of the shoulders, angle of the head, and shape of the face all underwent changes in the process. The arms, formed separately, incorporate paint brushes to reinforce the supporting wires. Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon acquired the original wax statuette in 1956, and gave it to the National Gallery of Art in 1999. It appears here among other representations of ballet subjects by Degas, executed in a variety of media, from the Gallery's collections, as well as two works from the Corcoran Collection. More Degas sculptures can be found on the ground floor in galleries G3 and G4, and other paintings by him are located in several nearby galleries on the floor.
2. NGADAC_141010_015.JPG: Edgar Degas Ballet Scene, c 1907
3. NGADAC_141010_025.JPG: Paul Mathey Edgar Degas, 1882
4. NGADAC_141010_030.JPG: Edgar Degas Dancer Seen from Behind and Three Studies of Feet, c 1878
5. NGADAC_141010_044.JPG: Edgar Degas Study in the Nude of Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (Nude Little Dancer), c 1878-1881
6. NGADAC_141010_052.JPG: Edgar Debas The Ballet Master, c 1874
7. NGADAC_141010_063.JPG: The model for the master on the left was Jules Perrot, a great dancer/choreographer who later worked as an instructor. This is probably Degas's first monotype, a print made by creating a design in ink on a blank copper plate, placing a piece of paper over it, and then passing it through a press to create a single impression and sometimes a second, fainter one. His friend Vicomte Lepic introduced him to the challenging technique, and they both signed this print. Degas frequently combined monotype with other media such as chalk and especially pastels, as seen in three other works in this room.
8. NGADAC_141010_067.JPG: Edgar Degas The Dance Class (Ecole de Danse), c 1873
9. NGADAC_141010_074.JPG: Degas was even more fascinated by dancers behind the scenes than with their performances on stage. Here he gathered an ambitious number of dancers -- perhaps the most he attempted in any one work -- to present a deceptively random-looking vignette of the ballet studio. Graceful movements of dancers rehearsing contrast with the sometimes awkward features of those caught in unguarded moments. Cropped legs descending the spiral staircase add to the air of immediacy and sense of movement.
10. NGADAC_141010_090.JPG: Edgar Degas The Dance Lesson, c 1879
11. NGADAC_141010_096.JPG: Edgar Degas The Curtain, c 1880
12. NGADAC_141010_103.JPG: Edgar Degas The Ballet, c 1880
13. NGADAC_141010_113.JPG: A frequent, ominous figure in Degas's ballet images is the black-clad gentleman in a top hat, such as the one in the foreground next to a dancer who seems to flee. Such men were wealthy subscribers to the ballet, allowing to roam the opera house and mingle with dancers backstage, in the wings, at the rehearsal studio, and even in the dressing rooms. Their ubiquitous presence at the opera is suggested by the four trousered male figured partially visible in this scene. Such privileged access often led to relationships, subject of widespread gossip, in which the gentlemen financially supported their favorite dancers and promoted their careers.
14. NGADAC_141010_121.JPG: Edgar Degas Fourth Position Front, on the Left Leg, c 1885/1890
15. NGADAC_141010_129.JPG: Edgar Degas Ballet Dancers, c 1877
16. NGADAC_141010_138.JPG: Edgar Degas Dancers at the Old Opera House, c 1877
17. NGADAC_141010_145.JPG: Edgar Degas Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, 1878-1881 This statuette is the original wax version of Degas's most famous sculpture, widely known through posthumous bronze casts. When it was briefly displayed at the impressionist exhibition of 1881, its soft, translucent material, real clothing and hair, and individualized portrayal of a recognizably modern adolescent unsettled audiences accustomed to idealized figures in marble. With eyes half closed and chin thrust forward, the subject appears absorbed in her craft. Perhaps she also envisions the "illustrious life" that Degas, in a poem, wished for a young dancer, while hoping she might still keep her identity as a girl from the streets of Paris.
18. NGADAC_141010_168.JPG: X-radiography of Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen
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