Edgar Degas

Estate of the artist, Paris

A.A. Hébrard, Paris (acquired from the above)

Nelly Hébrard, Paris (1955)

Grégoire Triet, Paris

Lefevre Gallery, London (1997)

Acquired from the above by the present owner

London, The Lefevre Gallery, The Lost Plasters of Edgar Degas, 1996

Paul Gsell, “Edgar Degas statuaire,” La Renaissance de l’Art français et des industries de luxe, Paris, December 1918, illustrated p. 375

Paul-André Lemoisne, “Les Statuettes de Degas,” Art et Décoration, Paris, September-October 1919, illustrated p. 113

Alice Michel, “Degas et son modèle,” Le Mercure de France, Paris, February 1, 1919, illustrated p. 628

John Rewald, Degas: Works in Sculpture – A Complete Catalogue, New York, 1944, illustrated pp. 25 & 100

Pierre Borel, Les Sculptures inédites de Degas: Choix de cires originales, Geneva, 1949, illustrated

Jeanne Fevre, Mon Oncle Degas, Geneva, 1949, illustrated pp. 112-113

Charles Millard, The Sculpture of Edgar Degas, Princeton, 1976, pp. 18, 30 & 35

Ettore Camesasca & Giorgio Cortenova, Degas, Scultore, Milan, 1986, illustrated p. 192

Anne Pingeot, Degas, Sculptures, Paris, 1991, no.  35, illustrated p. 170

Richard Kendall, “Who Said Anything about Rodin? The Visibility and Renown of Degas’ Late Sculpture,” Apollo, London, August 1995, illustrated pp. 73-77

Richard Kendall, Degas: Beyond Impressionism (exhibition catalogue), The Art Institute of Chicago, 1996, illustrated pp. 33-35

Sara Campbell, “Degas, The Sculptures,” Apollo, London, August 1995, no. 40, catalogued p. 30

Joseph S. Czestochowski & Anne Pingeot, Degas Sculpture, Catalogue Raisonné of the Bronzes, Milan, 2002, no. 40, illustrated p. 199

Sarah Cambell, Richard Kendall, Daphne Barbour & Shelley Sturman, Degas in the Norton Simon Museum, Nineteenth-Century Art, vol. II, no. 40, discussed p. 531

Very good condition. There are a few minor retouches in the plaster of the figure's ankle, but otherwise the sculpture is stable.
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Danseuse regardant la plante de son pied droit is one of only three known plaster sculptures that Degas made during his lifetime. These plasters, including the present work, Femme se frottant le dos avec une éponge, torse (Collection National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.) and Danse espagnole (location unknown), were cast from the artist’s original wax figures between 1900 and 1903.   Because of Degas’ involvement and the single-step process of rendering the plaster form from the wax, the present work is a closer approximation to Degas’ original artistic concept than any of his bronzes.  The bronzes, almost all of which are posthumous, were cast from intermediary bronze modèles that had been made from molds of the wax figures.  The plasters, however, were cast directly from the waxes, and therefore bear the texture, surface details, and even fingerprints rendered by Degas’ own hand. 

In his essay about this important sculpture, Richard Kendall discusses Danseuse regardant la plante de son pied droit in the context of Degas’ sculptural oeuvre and considers it to be one of the most significant works of his later years:   “Degas’ sculpture is at the same time one of the most familiar and least understood aspects of his art.  More than a thousand bronze casts of his racehorses, ballet-dancers and bathing nudes, are scattered in collections throughout the world, while the twenty or so variants of the Little Dancer of Fourteen Years are universally known and widely celebrated.  The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, which was shown in the 1881 Impressionist exhibition, marks a high point in Degas’ naturalism, grander in scale but comparable in its precision to the superbly observed and almost contemporary Spanish Dance.  By contrast, Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her Right Foot belongs to Degas’ later sculptural ambition, now less documentary and quotidian, more concerned with reverie, equilibrium and expressive form.  Even more audacious structures from the artist’s last years reveal the breadth of his three-dimensional range, earning him a place along side the most innovative sculptors of his age and attracting the admiration of later practitioners from Pablo Picasso to Anthony Caro” (Richard Kendall, “The Two Lost Plasters of Sculptures by Edgar Degas,” The Lost Plasters of Edgar Degas (exhibition catalogue), Galerie d’Orsay, Paris Biennale; The Lefevre Gallery, London, 1996, p. 1).

What sets the present plaster cast of Danseuse regardant la plante de son pied droit apart from the majority of Degas’ sculptures is that its creation was overseen by Degas himself.  Degas was a perfectionist and exceedingly considered with the expressiveness of his figures, be they in his paintings, drawings or sculpture.  He continually remodeled and reworked his wax figures, sometimes for nearly over a decade, and considered each wax figure a work in progress.  Casting any one of them would be equal to calling it complete, and Degas was reluctant to do so. It was only at the insistence and encouragement of his friends that he agreed to cast some of these works in a more durable medium for the sake of posterity.  Because he held many reservations about bronze, which he considered to be too final and even too ‘funerary’ a medium, he chose to work with plaster.  

The reason why Degas chose Danseuse regardant la plante de son pied droit out of all his wax figures to cast reveals his obsession with this subject and his confidence in arriving at this final form. Richard Kendall tells us that Degas created at least six versions of a woman looking at the sole of her foot, which were later cast in bronze after his death.  Although John Rewald dated the original wax version of Danseuse regardant la plante de son pied droit to circa 1882-1895, recent scholarship has revised the dates to circa 1890-1900.   It is believed that Degas had this wax version cast in the present plaster sometime between 1900 and 1903 with the assistance of the foundry owner Adrien-A. Hébrard and the caster Albino Palazzolo.  Richard Kendall provides the following analysis for why Degas selected this particular sculpture for the plaster experiment:  “Degas’ decision to cast this figure into plaster around 1900 is highly instructive.  One of the six variants in wax on the same theme, each based on a nude figure balanced on one leg who turns to support or inspect her other foot, this subject is often considered one of Degas’ most inspired and audacious sculptural inventions.  Movement is fused with stability, precariousness, with momentary equilibrium, in a succession of forms that animate both the human body and the flurry of space around it.  So engaged was Degas himself by the theme that he also used the figure in dozens of drawings and pastels, some perhaps in anticipation of waxes, others apparently derived from them.  The present three-dimensional study is generally considered the first of the series, the most elegantly poised and certainly the most highly finished. Famously reluctant to declare his work complete, Degas not only considered this example sufficiently resolved to be preserved in a more permanent form but chose to display the plaster where he knew it would be seen by his acquaintances” (Richard Kendall, “The Two Lost Plasters of Sculptures by Edgar Degas,” The Lost Plasters of Edgar Degas (exhibition catalogue), London, 1996).

Degas displayed the present work in a glass case in his studio, and after his death in 1917, it was documented by the photographer Gauthier in 1918.  Contemporary accounts from this time tell that a number of wax figures and some plasters left in the artist’s studio had crumbled or broken, but the present work remained intact.   We can even see in Gauthier’s photograph the joins and details that exist in this plaster today.  For over half a century after Degas completed it, the present sculpture remained in the family of the foundry master, Hébrard.  It was only exhibited in public for the first time in 1996, and since then, its ‘reappearance’ has been cause for a resurgence of scholarly investigation on Degas’ working methods.