Degas Fourteen Year Old Little Dancer Ballerina with Fabric Skirt, Large

Description

Reproduction of Edgar Degas’ most famous statue, Little Dancer of Fourteen Years. This replica is faithful to the original because it includes a cloth skirt and hair bow as had the original. Part of the renowned museum replica collection by Parastone. Degas’ signature appears on the underside of the base and statue comes with a color description card. Made from resin and fabric on a wood base. Measures: 13.5″H x 6″W x 6″D.

The Fourteen-year-old Dancer (La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans, 1881)
After beginning to lose his eyesight after his fiftieth birthday, Degas became increasingly dependent on his sense of touch and so started to turn from painting to sculpting. Although during the last period of his life he hardly ever showed his work to anybody, he decided after working the Dancer for than two years, to send his work to the impressionist exhibition in Paris

After he had carefully sculpted the body, he had the clothes custom made: the bodice, the net dancing skirt and the ballet shoes. On top of the bodice he then worked again with wax, so this was to become a solid part of the figure when it was cast in bronze. He expected a sympathetic reaction from the audience, but they were at an utter loss. It was obviously too realistic. ‘Mister Degas dreamed of an ideal picture of ugliness. The fortunate man! He has achieved it …’, a critic wrote. He was known as a painter and now he had designed something that seemed to laugh at all the traditional values of the art of sculpting, which was something the audience just could not understand.

After this experience Degas never exhibited any of his work again. Looking back, he was clearly ahead of his time and he had developed a degree of objective realism for which his contemporaries were not in the slightest prepared. It is a lifelike sculpture, with her chin lifted into the air and her immature body, the girl is standing before us, ready to start moving whilst at the same time she seems motionless and timeless — so characteristic of the true art which outlives its time so splendidly.

EDGAR DEGAS (1834-1917)
The course of life of the Parisian painter had few dramatic peaks. Being the eldest son of a well-to-do family, the cynical, snobby loner was able to devote his life to the arts. Furthermore, he remained a bachelor because: ‘There is love and there is work, and we only have one heart.’

His classical education can be recognized in his earlier work, in particular the strict composition and line inspired by Ingres whom he greatly admired. Degas took a special position within the group of artists led by his friend Monet, who regularly got together in the Cafe Guerbois. His cynicism and sharp tongue however, made his difficult in company and many ideas from Zola, Renoir and Monet did not appeal to him. Although he referred to himself as an ‘independent realist’, he was very much involved in the impressionistic revolution and the themes and techniques developed the traditional and modern art of painting.

In 1874, together with Monet, he organized the first exhibition of the ‘independents’, which was named the ‘the impressionists’ by a critic. A realist: ‘I know nothing of inspiration, spontaneity and temperament.’ He locked himself up inside his studio and used photos as a mnemonic device, whilst others went outside with the tubes of paint which had recently come onto the market. Degas considered that utter nonsense: ‘Painting is not a sport!’, besides: ‘I do not have the habit of painting when I am in the countryside.’

In his fifties he began to encounter financial problems and on top of that his eyesight began to deteriorate. However, according to Renoir only then ‘the real Degas’ emerged through his paintings’. Degas himself said: ‘Anyone can be talented when his is twenty-five, what count is to have talent when you are fifty.’