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Edgar Degas

Woman Taken Unawares, late 1880s/early 1890s

West Building, Ground Floor — Gallery G3

Medium

pigmented beeswax, metal armature, cork, on wooden base

Dimensions

overall without base: 41.3 x 24.1 x 16.1 cm (16 1/4 x 9 1/2 x 6 5/16 in.)
height (of figure): 41 cm (16 1/8 in.)

Credit Line

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Accession Number

1985.64.51

Artists / Makers

Edgar Degas (sculptor) French, 1834 - 1917

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Inscription

on wax behind left foot: Degas

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

Degas, Edgar
Hébrard, Adrien-Aurélien
Hébrard, Nelly
Knoedler & Company, M.
Mellon, Paul

Exhibition History

1955: Edgar Degas 1834-1917: Original Wax Sculptures, M. Knoedler & Company, Inc., New York, 1955, no. 52.

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

1965: Wax Sculptures by Degas, Sculptures and Drawings by Rodin, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1965-1966, no cat.

Bibliography

1919: Lemoisne, Paul-André. "Les statuettes de Degas." Art et Décoration 214 (September-October 1919): 114, repro.

1949: Borel, Pierre. Les Sculptures inédites de Degas. Geneva, 1949: 10, repro.

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

1986: McCarty, John. "A Sculptor's Thoughts on the Degas Waxes." In Essays in Honor of Paul Mellon, Collector and Benefactor, edited by John W. Wilmerding, 217-225. Washington, D.C., 1986: 225 n. 11.

1991: Lesser, Wendy. "Degas's Nudes." In His Other Half: Men Looking at Women Through Art, 53-80. Cambridge, MA, 1991: 69.

1991: Pingeot, Anne. Degas Sculptures. Paris, 1991: no. 61, repro.

1992: Barbour, Daphne. "Degas's Wax Sculptures from the Inside Out." The Burlington Magazine 84, no. 1077 (December 1992): 803, fig. 39 (radiograph).

1994: Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1994: 71, repro.

1995: Campbell, Sara. "A Catalogue of Degas' Bronzes." Apollo 142 (August 1995): 10-48, no. 42.

2002: Czestochowski, Joseph S., and Anne Pingeot. Degas--Sculptures. Catalogue Raisonné of the Bronzes. Memphis, 2002: 203, repro.

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. 46, 272-275, color repro.