Study in the Nude of Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (Nude Little Dancer)

c. 1878-1881

Edgar Degas

Sculptor, French, 1834 - 1917

A young, nude girl is roughly modeled with glossy navy blue and wine-red beeswax in this freestanding sculpture. She faces our left in profile in this photograph. Her weight rests on her left foot, closer to us, and her other leg extends long, the foot turned out at an angle. Her hands are clasped behind her back, and her round belly projects from her swayed hips. Her head is tipped back and her eyes closed. She stands on a double pedestal. A crack runs across one corner of the top, white, square plaster pedestal. A wider wood pedestal is below.

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On View

West Building Ground Floor, Gallery G3

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    pigmented beeswax, plaster core, metal and wood armatures, on plaster and wooden bases

  • Credit Line

    Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

  • Dimensions

    overall without base: 69.5 x 29.3 x 30.3 cm (27 3/8 x 11 9/16 x 11 15/16 in.)
    overall (wood base): 3.5 x 48 x 31.1 cm (1 3/8 x 18 7/8 x 12 1/4 in.)
    overall (plaster base): 5 x 34.6 x 26.8 cm (1 15/16 x 13 5/8 x 10 9/16 in.)

  • Accession

    1985.64.46

More About this Artwork

Four light-skinned ballerinas with russet-orange hair tied back in buns adjust the straps of their bodices as they gather close together, their bodies and wide, knee-length tutus taking up the left half of this horizontal painting. The background or backdrop beyond them shows a grove of deep green trees to our left and a sunset view of meadows leading back to trees to our right. Three of the dancers stand in a row that extends from the lower left corner to our right and away from us. All three wear rust-orange bodices over tutus that are painted loosely with flecks of pale celery green and buttercup yellow against a muted royal-blue background. Their bodices and upper bodies are outlined with black. The woman closest to us stands with her body angled to our right. Her face turns away as she looks to her left and adjusts that shoulder strap. The two dancers farther from us stand with their backs to us, their bodies angled away from us to our left. The middle dancer looks back over her right shoulder as she lifts the other elbow to adjust that strap. The third dancer in the row holds both hands to her right strap as she looks off into the distance, to our left. The fourth ballerina, to our far left beyond this trio, stands with the arm we can see, her left, lifted with her hand held high as she looks off to our right. Her bodice is a brighter carrot orange, and is more loosely painted. The green foliage behind the dancers extends off the top edge of the painting. The pale sage-green field to the right stretches before puffy, rounded trees daubed with mauve-pink highlights. The coral-pink and golden yellow sky is streaked with lavender-gray clouds. The artist signed his name in red paint with tiny, almost illegible letters in the lower right corner, “Degas.”

Scholarly Article:  Degas's Dancers

A young, nude girl is roughly modeled with glossy navy blue and wine-red beeswax in this freestanding sculpture. She faces our left in profile in this photograph. Her weight rests on her left foot, closer to us, and her other leg extends long, the foot turned out at an angle. Her hands are clasped behind her back, and her round belly projects from her swayed hips. Her head is tipped back and her eyes closed. She stands on a double pedestal. A crack runs across one corner of the top, white, square plaster pedestal. A wider wood pedestal is below.

Scholarly Article:  Study in the Nude of Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (Nude Little Dancer)

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The artist [1834-1917]; his heirs;[1] Adrien-Aurélien Hébrard [1865-1937], Paris;[2] his daughter, Nelly Hébrard [1904-1985], Paris;[3] consigned 1955 to (M. Knoedler & Company, Inc., New York); purchased May 1956 by Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia; gift 1985 to NGA.
[1] The artist's heirs were René De Gas, his last surviving brother, who lived in Paris, and the four (of seven) surviving children of his sister Marguerite, who had died in Argentina in 1895. (His other deceased sister Thérèse left no descendants.) Marguerite's children were: Jeanne Fevre, unmarried and acting on both her own behalf and as the representative of her sister, Madeleine Marie Pauline Fevre, a Carmelite nun; Henri Jean Auguste Marie Fevre, an industrialist who lived in Marseille; and Gabriel Edgar Eugène Fevre, an agent in Montevideo, Uruguay. See Anne Pingeot and Frank Horvat, Degas sculptures, Paris, 1991, and Anne Pingeot, "The casting of Degas' sculptures: Completing the story," Apollo (August 1995): 60-63.
[2] On 13 May 1918 a contract was signed between the artist's heirs and the Hébrard foundry authorizing the reproduction of Degas' sculptures in bronze. Of the approximately 150 statuettes found in the artist's studio after his death, 74 figures were ultimately cast in bronze. The contract stipulated that two complete sets were to be cast, one for the heirs and one for the foundry, and authorized a limit of twenty casts of each figure to be offered for sale. The casting process took at least thirteen years, from 1919 to 1932, and according to the contract, the original figures became the property of the foundry. See Sara Campbell, "Degas' bronzes: Introduction," Apollo (August 1995): 6-10.
[3] The article by Anne Pingeot referenced in note 1 provides details of the role of Hébrard's daughter in the history of the foundry, and its work in casting the bronzes.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1955

  • Edgar Degas 1834-1917: Original Wax Sculptures, M. Knoedler & Company, Inc., New York, 1955, no. 19, repro.

1956

  • Sculpture by Degas, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 1956.

1999

  • An Enduring Legacy: Masterpieces from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1999-2000, as Study in the Nude for the Dressed Ballet Dancer, no cat.

2014

  • Degas's Little Dancer, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2014-2015, brochure, fig. 9.

Bibliography

1918

  • Gsell, Paul. "Edgar Degas, statuaire." La Renaissance de l'Art Français et des Industries de Luxe (December 1918): 376.

1919

  • Lemoisne, Paul-André. "Les statuettes de Degas." Art et Décoration 214 (September-October 1919): 113, repro.

1949

  • Borel, Pierre. Les Sculptures inédites de Degas. Geneva, 1949: n.p., repro.

1956

  • Rewald, John. Degas Sculpture: The Complete Works. Translated by John Coleman and Noel Moulton. New York, 1956: no. XIX.

1976

  • Millard, Charles W. The Sculpture of Edgar Degas. Princeton, 1976: 99, figs. 23, 24.

1984

  • Shackelford, George. Degas: The Dancers. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1984: 74-75.

1988

  • Thomson, Richard. Degas: The Nudes. New York, 1988: 119-123, fig. 112.

1991

  • Pingeot, Anne. Degas Sculptures. Paris, 1991: no. 37, repro.

1994

  • Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1994: 69, repro.

1995

  • Barbour, Daphne. "Degas's Little Dancer: Not Just a Study in the Nude." Art Journal 54, no. 2 (Summer 1995): 28+.

  • Sturman, Shelley, and Daphne Barbour. "The Materials of the Sculptor: Degas' Techniques." Apollo (1995): 52-53, fig. 6.

  • Campbell, Sara. "A Catalogue of Degas' Bronzes." Apollo 142 (August 1995): 38, no. 56.

1998

  • Kendall, Richard, with contributions by Douglas W. Druick and Arthur Beale. Degas and the Little Dancer. Exh. cat. Josyln Art Museum, Omaha. New Haven and London, 1998: 35-36.

2002

  • Czestochowski, Joseph S., and Anne Pingeot. Degas--Sculptures. Catalogue Raisonné of the Bronzes. Memphis, 2002: 231, repro.

2009

  • Campbell, Sara, et al. Degas in the Norton Simon Museum: Nineteenth-Century Art. New Haven, 2009: 217-218.

2010

  • Lindsay, Suzanne Glover, Daphne S. Barbour, and Shelley G. Sturman. Edgar Degas Sculpture. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 2010: no. 17, 144-149, color repro.

2017

  • Lomax, Suzanne Quillen, Barbara H. Berrie, and Michael Palmer. "Edgar Degas's Wax Sculptures: Characterization and Comparison with Contemporary Practice." In Degas, Daphne Barbour and Suzanne Quillen Lomax, eds. Facture. Conservation, Science, Art History 3 (2017): 50-77, esp. 65-66, 70, fig. 15 (UV photograph).

Wikidata ID

Q63860785

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