EDGAR DEGAS (1834-1917) Étude de danseuses
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EDGAR DEGAS (1834-1917)
Étude de danseuses
stamped with the signature 'Degas' (Lugt 658; lower left)
charcoal, pastel and wash on paper
18 ½ x 23 ¼in. (47 x 59cm.)
Executed circa 1878-1879
PROVENANCE
The artist's estate; third sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 7-9 April 1919, lot 277.
Henri Cottevieille, Paris, by whom acquired at the above sale.
Galerie de l’Élysée, Paris.
Arthur Tooth & Sons, London, by whom acquired from the above on 10 March 1959.
A.D. Peters, London, by whom acquired from the above on 24 March 1959.
Anonymous sale, Sotheby's, London, 4 July 1962, lot 35.
Lord Rayne, London, by whom acquired at the above sale, and thence by descent; sale, Sotheby's, London, 8 February 2005, lot 29.
Eykyn Maclean Gallery, New York.
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2011.
LITERATURE
J. Rewald, Degas: Works in Sculpture, A Complete Catalogue, New York, 1944, p. 22 (illustrated p. 66).
The Illustrated London News, 11 April 1959, p. 33 (illustrated; titled ‘Studies for ‘Petite danseuse de quatorze ans’’).
J. Rewald, The History of Impressionism, New York, 1961, p. 450 (illustrated; titled ‘Studies for sculpture’ and with incorrect medium).
T. Reff, Degas: The Artist's Mind, London, 1976, pp. 244 & 333.
R. Kendall, Degas and the Little Dancer, exh. cat. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, 1998, p. 39 (illustrated fig. 19; titled ‘Two Studies of a Dancer’ and dated ‘circa 1878-1880’).
EXHIBITION
London, Arthur Tooth & Sons, Paris-Londres, a collection of pictures many recently acquired in France, April 1959, no. 16 (illustrated; titled ‘Studies for ‘Petite danseuse de quatorze ans’’ and dated ‘1878’).
Saint Louis, Art Museum, Drawings by Degas, January – February 1967, no. 99, p. 155 (illustrated p. 156); this exhibition later travelled to Philadelphia, Museum of Art, March – April 1967; and Minneapolis Institute of Fine Arts, May – June 1967.
Nottingham, University Art Gallery, Degas: Pastels and Drawings, January – February 1969, no. 17 (illustrated).
Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland, Degas 1879, August – September 1979, no. 77, p. 66 (illustrated).
Tübingen, Kunsthalle, Edgar Degas: Pastelle, Ölskizzen, Zeichnungen, January – March 1984, no. 114, p. 368 (illustrated; titled ‘Zwei Studien der vierzehnjährigen Tänzerin’); this exhibition later travelled to Berlin, Nationalgalerie, April – May 1984.
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Degas: The Dancers, November 1984 – March 1985, no. 21, p. 136 (illustrated p. 72).
Manchester, Whitworth Art Gallery, The Private Degas, January – February 1987, no. 70, pp. 140 & 141 (illustrated); this exhibition later travelled to Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, March – May 1987.
London, Royal Academy of Arts, Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement, September – December 2011, no. 25, p. 81 (illustrated; details illustrated pp. 82 & 83; titled ‘Two Studies of a Dancer’).
LOT ESSAY
At the time of his death in 1917 at the age of eighty-three, Edgar Degas's studio was filled with pastel and charcoal drawings. Two years after his death, the preeminent dealers of modernism—Bernheim-Jeune, Paul Durand-Ruel and Ambroise Vollard— organized a series of auctions selling Degas's personal collection of Impressionist paintings, as well as the privileged contents of his studio. The present work was among the rigorous preparatory drawings of ballerinas—the subject for which the artist is know best known— that were sold with Degas's estate.
In this figure study, Degas presents the model in two similar but distinct stages of the same pose – her arms are stretched and elongated behind her back, her hands delicately clasped together. The work is one of several studies Degas executed from around 1878-1881 for the sculpture Petite danseuse de quatorze ans, which he exhibited in the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition in 1881. Depicting the young aspiring ballet dancer Marie van Goethem, Petite danseuse de quatorze ans is now one of the artist’s most renowned works and the only sculpture exhibited by Degas during his lifetime (John Rewald, Degas Sculpture, Paris, 1957, no. XX).
Marie van Goethem was a daughter of a Belgian tailor and a laundress who lived on the rue de Douai, not far from Degas on the lower slopes of Montmartre. Together with her two sisters, Antoinette and Louise-Joséphine, Marie was a ballet student at the Paris Opéra, one of the many young girls, “petits rats de l’opéra,” as they were known, who sought to one day perform on the hallowed stage of this revered institution. With her petite stature, long legs and arms, and elegant poise, Marie had the ideal proportions for a ballerina. Supposedly proud of her dark hair that she wore loose when she danced, she survived the unrelenting rigors and intense competition of her profession to perform in two Opéra ballets, La Korrigane in 1880, and Namouna in 1882. After this, she dropped out of the Opéra school due to a lack of attendance; she was later mentioned in a newspaper column of 1887, as a “model…for painters, who is frequently seen at the Brasserie des Martyrs, the Café de la Nouvelle Athènes, and the bar of Le Rat Mort” (quoted in R. Kendall, Degas and the Little Dancer, exh. cat., Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, 1998, p. 15).
By the time that Degas created Etude de Danseuses, his reputation as “the painter of dancers” had been firmly secured. While throughout the 1870s his Impressionist contemporaries, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and to a certain extent, Édouard Manet, had been obsessed with sunlight, seeking to capture its effects on the outside world around them, Degas found infinite artistic potential in the shadowy corners of the Paris Opéra, its stage wings, dressing rooms, and above all, the rehearsal studios. Scenes illuminated by gaslight, rather than sunlight, were Degas’s preoccupation, and in this series to which the present drawing belongs, he conjures brilliant highlights in white pastel to evoke the artificial lights of the ballet.
Degas quickly realized that the ballet offered him a subject that could set him apart from the rest of the avant-garde, as well as facilitating a complete immersion in his primary love: the depiction of the human form. The ever-changing character of ballet as a form of physical expression paralleled Degas' own artistic experiments, particularly his obsession of capturing the human body from every conceivable angle and level. As Lillian Browse explained, Degas "used that art [of ballet] for the exploration of his own" (Lillian Browse, Degas Dancers, London, 1949, p. 46). Degas executed few sketches and paintings of actual performances and the more polished movements of dancers sur la scene. The major body of his work explores the life of the dancer off-stage, in the practice studio or at rest, and demonstrates how Degas preferred to capture the spontaneity and the chance happenings of the backstage world. Lillian Browse has observed, "for the painter who desired to peep through the keyhole, who loved the 'accidental,' it was all ideal" (ibid., p. 52).
EDGAR DEGAS (1834-1917)
Étude de danseuses
stamped with the signature 'Degas' (Lugt 658; lower left)
charcoal, pastel and wash on paper
18 ½ x 23 ¼in. (47 x 59cm.)
Executed circa 1878-1879
PROVENANCE
The artist's estate; third sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 7-9 April 1919, lot 277.
Henri Cottevieille, Paris, by whom acquired at the above sale.
Galerie de l’Élysée, Paris.
Arthur Tooth & Sons, London, by whom acquired from the above on 10 March 1959.
A.D. Peters, London, by whom acquired from the above on 24 March 1959.
Anonymous sale, Sotheby's, London, 4 July 1962, lot 35.
Lord Rayne, London, by whom acquired at the above sale, and thence by descent; sale, Sotheby's, London, 8 February 2005, lot 29.
Eykyn Maclean Gallery, New York.
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2011.
LITERATURE
J. Rewald, Degas: Works in Sculpture, A Complete Catalogue, New York, 1944, p. 22 (illustrated p. 66).
The Illustrated London News, 11 April 1959, p. 33 (illustrated; titled ‘Studies for ‘Petite danseuse de quatorze ans’’).
J. Rewald, The History of Impressionism, New York, 1961, p. 450 (illustrated; titled ‘Studies for sculpture’ and with incorrect medium).
T. Reff, Degas: The Artist's Mind, London, 1976, pp. 244 & 333.
R. Kendall, Degas and the Little Dancer, exh. cat. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, 1998, p. 39 (illustrated fig. 19; titled ‘Two Studies of a Dancer’ and dated ‘circa 1878-1880’).
EXHIBITION
London, Arthur Tooth & Sons, Paris-Londres, a collection of pictures many recently acquired in France, April 1959, no. 16 (illustrated; titled ‘Studies for ‘Petite danseuse de quatorze ans’’ and dated ‘1878’).
Saint Louis, Art Museum, Drawings by Degas, January – February 1967, no. 99, p. 155 (illustrated p. 156); this exhibition later travelled to Philadelphia, Museum of Art, March – April 1967; and Minneapolis Institute of Fine Arts, May – June 1967.
Nottingham, University Art Gallery, Degas: Pastels and Drawings, January – February 1969, no. 17 (illustrated).
Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland, Degas 1879, August – September 1979, no. 77, p. 66 (illustrated).
Tübingen, Kunsthalle, Edgar Degas: Pastelle, Ölskizzen, Zeichnungen, January – March 1984, no. 114, p. 368 (illustrated; titled ‘Zwei Studien der vierzehnjährigen Tänzerin’); this exhibition later travelled to Berlin, Nationalgalerie, April – May 1984.
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Degas: The Dancers, November 1984 – March 1985, no. 21, p. 136 (illustrated p. 72).
Manchester, Whitworth Art Gallery, The Private Degas, January – February 1987, no. 70, pp. 140 & 141 (illustrated); this exhibition later travelled to Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, March – May 1987.
London, Royal Academy of Arts, Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement, September – December 2011, no. 25, p. 81 (illustrated; details illustrated pp. 82 & 83; titled ‘Two Studies of a Dancer’).
LOT ESSAY
At the time of his death in 1917 at the age of eighty-three, Edgar Degas's studio was filled with pastel and charcoal drawings. Two years after his death, the preeminent dealers of modernism—Bernheim-Jeune, Paul Durand-Ruel and Ambroise Vollard— organized a series of auctions selling Degas's personal collection of Impressionist paintings, as well as the privileged contents of his studio. The present work was among the rigorous preparatory drawings of ballerinas—the subject for which the artist is know best known— that were sold with Degas's estate.
In this figure study, Degas presents the model in two similar but distinct stages of the same pose – her arms are stretched and elongated behind her back, her hands delicately clasped together. The work is one of several studies Degas executed from around 1878-1881 for the sculpture Petite danseuse de quatorze ans, which he exhibited in the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition in 1881. Depicting the young aspiring ballet dancer Marie van Goethem, Petite danseuse de quatorze ans is now one of the artist’s most renowned works and the only sculpture exhibited by Degas during his lifetime (John Rewald, Degas Sculpture, Paris, 1957, no. XX).
Marie van Goethem was a daughter of a Belgian tailor and a laundress who lived on the rue de Douai, not far from Degas on the lower slopes of Montmartre. Together with her two sisters, Antoinette and Louise-Joséphine, Marie was a ballet student at the Paris Opéra, one of the many young girls, “petits rats de l’opéra,” as they were known, who sought to one day perform on the hallowed stage of this revered institution. With her petite stature, long legs and arms, and elegant poise, Marie had the ideal proportions for a ballerina. Supposedly proud of her dark hair that she wore loose when she danced, she survived the unrelenting rigors and intense competition of her profession to perform in two Opéra ballets, La Korrigane in 1880, and Namouna in 1882. After this, she dropped out of the Opéra school due to a lack of attendance; she was later mentioned in a newspaper column of 1887, as a “model…for painters, who is frequently seen at the Brasserie des Martyrs, the Café de la Nouvelle Athènes, and the bar of Le Rat Mort” (quoted in R. Kendall, Degas and the Little Dancer, exh. cat., Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, 1998, p. 15).
By the time that Degas created Etude de Danseuses, his reputation as “the painter of dancers” had been firmly secured. While throughout the 1870s his Impressionist contemporaries, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and to a certain extent, Édouard Manet, had been obsessed with sunlight, seeking to capture its effects on the outside world around them, Degas found infinite artistic potential in the shadowy corners of the Paris Opéra, its stage wings, dressing rooms, and above all, the rehearsal studios. Scenes illuminated by gaslight, rather than sunlight, were Degas’s preoccupation, and in this series to which the present drawing belongs, he conjures brilliant highlights in white pastel to evoke the artificial lights of the ballet.
Degas quickly realized that the ballet offered him a subject that could set him apart from the rest of the avant-garde, as well as facilitating a complete immersion in his primary love: the depiction of the human form. The ever-changing character of ballet as a form of physical expression paralleled Degas' own artistic experiments, particularly his obsession of capturing the human body from every conceivable angle and level. As Lillian Browse explained, Degas "used that art [of ballet] for the exploration of his own" (Lillian Browse, Degas Dancers, London, 1949, p. 46). Degas executed few sketches and paintings of actual performances and the more polished movements of dancers sur la scene. The major body of his work explores the life of the dancer off-stage, in the practice studio or at rest, and demonstrates how Degas preferred to capture the spontaneity and the chance happenings of the backstage world. Lillian Browse has observed, "for the painter who desired to peep through the keyhole, who loved the 'accidental,' it was all ideal" (ibid., p. 52).