The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer sculpture
Location: 19 Rue Pierre Fontaine, 1878/79 – 1882, point 10
We next catch up with Degas at point 10, 19 Rue Pierre Fontaine where he lived from 1878 – 82.
The apartment building where Degas created his Little Dancer sculpture
A metal panel put up by the Mayor of Paris marks the spot. 19 Rue Pierre Fontaine is also a Toulouse-Lautrec site; Lautrec lived in this building five years after Degas had left.
Degas’ studio, where he made his famous statue, was in the courtyard behind the apartment doors; he lived on the fifth floor.
Marie van Goethem
Marie van Goethem was an adolescent opera dancer and Degas’ neighbour. Degas—who wanted to create a sculpture for the sixth Impressionist exhibition in 1881—regularly invited her here to sit for him.
She was a typical Paris Opera ballet dancer; young and working-class. Degas regularly saw Marie as she put herself through the rigorous, repetitive, Paris Opera rehearsal regime. At fourteen she was trying her best to earn her living through dance.
We can imagine her pushing the doors of this building and knocking on the studio door in the courtyard. She would have been carrying a bag with her ballet outfit and would change in the studio. Degas—not known for his empathy and for whom artistic ends justified the means—would have forced her to maintain awkward and uncomfortable poses for ages. She would have expected a hard day’s work when she arrived at the studio and was probably tense.
Marie’s sessions and collaboration with Degas produced a mesmerising and unique work of art from an artist who had never trained as a sculptor.
The piece, called The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer also known as The Little Dancer, caused a sensation at the sixth Impressionist show. The critical fallout was such that Degas never publicly exhibited another sculpture in his lifetime.
The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer sculpture
The wax statue of a ballerina was about three feet high. It featured human hair with a ribbon, a bodice, a silk tutu and linen slippers. It was unusual to produce a wax statue for exhibition and unheard of to dress it up. Dressing a statue like a doll was an unorthodox move on Degas’ part but fits into his artistic project to be a realist interested in modern subjects. He was showing his innovative side.
The ballerina’s posture was original and radical. Degas portrayed Marie in a rigid, tortured ballet pose: the dancer’s young limbs were locked in a tense twist, her arms braced behind her back, her legs blocked in an unnatural position, feet splayed.
Her slender, vulnerable frame looks as though it should be aching yet her expression seems unperturbed, even a little defiant. That slender body is also supple and conditioned. Her head held high has a look of supreme confidence, inner-strength and self-control. Her concentration, training and will-power have mastered what others have imposed on her.
Degas chose to show Marie realistically and he may even have exaggerated her features. She is not classically beautiful or refined. It is not known what Marie really looked like.
Degas reinventing sculpture or losing the plot?
The intensity of the work and the experimental move to dress the statue up encourages us to speculate on Degas’ other motives: Was Degas consciously reinventing sculpture? In the unnatural pose, was he criticising the too rigid ballet training regime for turning Marie into a ballerina doll? By showing a female artist in a difficult performance situation was Degas making an enlightened observation on the lack of choice and opportunity for women in his times? Did he wish to provoke a reaction and cause a stir among expert critical opinion? Had he been spending too much time in the studio and lost the plot a little?
The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer stirs up the prejudices of the time
The reception the sculpture received when shown at the show was mixed. Some critics appreciated the realism and modernity of the work.
Others preferred to align themselves with the misogynistic prejudices that they were comfortable with. In the spirit of the times they chastised Degas for depicting some vicious little riff-raff opera rat in an ungainly pose with degeneracy written all over her face.
Evolutionary theory, in their eyes, had legitimised the natural hierarchy of society locking the lower orders at the bottom of the pile. The critics, naturally, saw themselves near the apex.
What we see in this expressive and forceful work is an ‘opera rat’ in a taught and tall expression of defiance and pride. Her head is up. For the hostile critics and their half-baked social theorist allies who defended the conservative order, this specimen, in her control and poise, was getting above herself.
Degas retreated to the studio to experiment with sculpture in private
The uproar and ridicule that greeted Degas’ work disappointed him; from now on he would only experiment with sculpted figurines in the privacy of his studio.
Degas probably had little time for fools and he did not care for the opinion of experts, but he did not like public ridicule either. He felt exposed by the criticism. The sixth Impressionist exhibition of 1881 was the last time he exhibited a sculpture. He took his little dancer back to his studio and it was never seen again in public during his lifetime.
Still, this was not the end for Degas and his sculpture. He was fascinated by sculpted figurines of dancers and the sixth Impressionist show outcry did not stop him from experimenting.
In 1890 the Irish writer and painter George Moore saw “many decaying statues” when he called on the artist.
Degas continued to use sculpture as three dimensional notes to bring solidity and presence to his painted figures. With sculpted figurines he could explore a subject in the round on the very point of balance, frozen in a moment of precarious stability.
His painting influenced the sculpture and the sculpted pieces replied in a never ending fruitful dialogue. Degas was in fact so caught up in the conversation that it appears to have slipped out of his control. On his death in 1917 in his last address about 150 figurines were found, some falling to bits others “almost reduced to dust” as the art dealer Joseph Durand-Ruel noted.
The original wax figure produced in the studio here, 19, Rue Pierre Fontaine, is now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Bronze copies of the work, cast in the 1920s after Degas’ death, can be seen in various museums including the Orsay Museum in Paris.
The legacy of Degas’ breakthrough piece
The hostile narrow-minded critics of the time now rightly earn our disdain. The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer remains one of Degas’ best known works.
This magnetic, unsettling statue continues to intrigue and—like many great works of art—invite speculation about its meaning. What is its meaning? Does it have one or many? We know a little about the circumstances of its production but what do we choose to take from the experience of encountering it? Which narrative do we attach to it?
Here’s my shot: Marie van Goethem’s courage, control and dignity in the adversity of her times serve as an example of female strength and resilience. The Little Dancer is quietly rising to the challenge and will not be broken.
Miss La La at The Circus Fernando, Montmartre
Miss La La at The Circus Fernando is Degas’ unique circus piece. It shows another female performer in a difficult and dangerous position. She too is rising to the challenge with remarkable technique and courage. The painting dates from 1879 and would have been painted at this address.
The action is taking place near the ceiling above the ring, among the showy stucco decorations and supporting wrought iron roof beams of the Montmartre Circus. Miss La La is suspended from a thin rope and—as her outstretched arms and dangling legs prove—her only contact with the rope is through her teeth. She hangs high above the audience.
Degas has used foreshortening to show that Miss La La is performing almost directly overhead.
The fact that Degas has placed her image to one side of the canvas allows us to admire the architecture of the ceiling of this famous building and to contemplate her situation. Here is a lone performer in a perilous position, suspended by her teeth with nothing else around her but a drum roll, gasps from the audience and thin air.
The Montmartre Circus used to be housed in a handsome round building. A well known landmark, a popular entertainment venue, a meeting point for generations and an important setting and source of inspiration for the artists of Montmartre. It was demolished in the 1970s.
Some other notable works to be associated with this address are: The portrait of his friend Edmond Duranty in his library, The Star and The Dancer.
All photographs © David Macmillan except: (1), (2).
(1) Edgar Degas artist QS:P170,Q46373, Edgar Degas, Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando, 1879, marked as public domain, more details on Wikimedia Commons
(2) Edgar Degas artist QS:P170,Q46373, Edgar Degas, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, 1878-1881, NGA 110292, CC0 1.0
