Edgar Degas

Gustaf Engwall, Stockholm (acquired circa 1960s)
Thence by descent to the present owner

Franco Russoli, L'Opera completa di Degas, Milan, 1970, no. S1, illustration of another cast p. 140
John Rewald, Degas's Complete Sculpture: Catalogue Raisonné, San Francisco, 1990, no. XXXVII, illustration of another cast p. 112, illustration of the wax version p. 113
Anne Pigeot & Frank Horvat, Degas Sculptures, Paris, 1991, no. 2, illustrations of another cast p. 153
Sara Campbell, 'Degas, The Sculptures: A Catalogue Raisonné' in Apollo, August 1995, no. 14, illustration of another cast p. 17
Joseph S. Czestochowski & Anne Pingeot, Degas Sculptures, Catalogue Raisonné of the Bronzes, Memphis, 2002, no. 14, illustration of another cast p. 148, illustration of the wax version p. 149

Attractive dark brown patina. Apart from some light surface scratches and minor patina wear in places, consistent with age and handling, this work is in overall very good condition.
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The fervent exploration of movement is a defining feature of the œuvre of Edgar Degas, and nowhere is his exceptional aptitude for representing the human form in motion more evident than in his sculptures. John Rewald writes that 'it was in his passionate search for movement that all the statuettes of dancers doing arabesques, bowing, rubbing their knees, putting their stockings on, etc., and of women arranging their hair, stretching, rubbing their neck and so on were created. All these women are caught in poses which represent one single instant, in an arrested movement which is pregnant with the movement just completed and the one about to follow. To use Baudelaire's words, Degas "loved the human body as a material harmony, as a beautiful architecture with the addition of movement"' (John Rewald, op.cit., p. 23).

The pose of the present work is an arabesque, which has manipulated the human form into the personification of equilibrium; the height of the dancer is matched by the distance from hand to foot and balances upon the tension of a single planted leg. As Suzanne Glover Lindsay suggests: 'Degas' freestanding dancers in arabesque poses are exceptional in nineteenth-century sculpture for their radical extension [...] A colourful anecdote describes Degas' vexed obsession with the arabesque's gravitational challenges as sculpture: "You wouldn't believe", Degas supposedly ranted to the painter Georges Jeanniot, "what that work [a sculptural arabesque] has cost in research and rage; balance, above all, is so difficult to achieve"' (S. G. Lindsay in Edgar Degas Sculpture, New York, 2010, p. 197). In the present model the exquisite balance between the expressively worked surface and delicate poise of the dancer's arabesque exemplifies the finest qualities of Degas' sculpture.