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Little Dancer Aged Fourteen
Bronze cast of c. 1922, from an original of c. 1878-81 in wax and mixed media with fabric skirt
Degas exhibited the original sculpture, of which this is a rare cast, at the sixth Impressionist exhibition in 1881. Made in wax, and dressed in a fabric tutu and hair wig, it had a disturbingly realistic appearance that shocked those who saw it. Many found it ugly and even bestial, with facial features they compared to those of both a monkey and a dog. Unusually, the sculpture was exhibited in a glass case, which led critics to suggest that it belonged in ‘a museum of zoology, of anthropology, of physiology’, but not in a museum of art.
Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia
Link: Musée Dupuytren
Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle
