Knowra Little Dancer of Fourteen Years Little Dancer of Fourteen Years An 1881 sculpture by Edgar Degas depicting a young ballet student in a posed stance. Degas modeled the original in wax, with real hair, a fabric bodice, and a skirt; later versions were cast in bronze.
Edgar Degas : A French artist known for paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures of dancers and modern urban life. He modeled this figure from life and exhibited it under his name in 1881.
Sixth Impressionist Exhibition : The 1881 Paris exhibition organized by the independent artists later known as the Impressionists. Degas presented the sculpture there, his only sculpture publicly exhibited during his lifetime.
Little Dancer of Fourteen Years wax original : Degas’s original wax-and-textile version of the dancer, exhibited in Paris in 1881. Its fragile, unusually lifelike materials made the first presentation radically different from later bronzes.
Academic art : Art shaped by the institutions, teachings, and conventions of European academies. The figure’s ordinary subject and startling realism challenged polished academic ideals.
Sculpture : Three-dimensional art made by shaping, assembling, or casting materials. The work tests sculpture’s conventions through its unconventional materials and lifelike presentation.
Marie van Goethem : A young Belgian-born ballet student at the Paris Opéra who modeled for Degas. She is generally identified as the model for the fourteen-year-old dancer.
Little Dancer of Fourteen Years bronze casts : Bronze versions produced from Degas’s wax sculpture after his death. They made the composition widely available while changing its surface and material character.
Neoclassicism : An artistic movement drawing on classical antiquity’s forms, subjects, and ideals. Degas’s contemporary adolescent dancer departs from the idealized bodies favored by classical sculpture.
Lost-wax casting : A metal-casting process in which a wax model is replaced by molten metal. Bronze versions were made from casts of Degas’s wax original.
Paris Opéra Ballet School : The training institution for dancers associated with the Paris Opéra. Van Goethem trained in the world of young dancers that Degas represented.
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