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Home>Modeling Movement: Degas's Dancers

# 

Introduction

Degas's Dancers

 

Little Dancer Aged Fourteen

Technical Notes: Overview

Technical Notes: Internal Construction

Technical Notes: Exterior Construction

Technical Notes: Attire

Technical Notes: Conclusions

Introduction to Entry

Original State

Young Dancers

Iconographic Interpretations

Formal Context  

Formal Analysis

History of Project

 

Study in the Nude of Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (Nude Little Dancer)

Technical Notes

Entry

 

Fourth Position Front, on the Left Leg

Technical Notes

Entry

# Modeling Movement: Degas’s Dancers

Introduction

These articles are taken from the catalog *Edgar Degas Sculpture* (National Gallery of Art, 2010). The National Gallery of Art holds the largest collection of wax sculptures by Edgar Degas in the world. This award-winning volume documents this collection and the groundbreaking technical research conducted by the Gallery’s conservation staff, along with new art historical scholarship. Written by Daphne Barbour, senior conservator, department of object conservation, National Gallery of Art; Suzanne G. Lindsay, adjunct associate professor in the history of art, University of Pennsylvania; and Shelley Sturman, senior conservator and head of the department of object conservation, *Edgar Degas Sculpture*is the last print catalog in the distinguished Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue series, in which experts and scholars from around the world document the paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts in the Gallery’s collections. All subsequent National Gallery of Art collections catalogs will be published online in the new series National Gallery of Art Online Editions, which launched with *Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century* in 2014. *Edgar Degas Sculpture*can be purchased in the National Gallery shops here.

In honor of the *Degas’s Little Dancer*exhibition, the National Gallery of Art is pleased to make this extensive research on three of its most popular sculptures available to the public online for the first time.

Edgar Degas, *Little Dancer Aged Fourteen*, 1878–1881, pigmented beeswax, clay, metal armature, rope, paintbrushes, human hair, silk and linen ribbon, cotton and silk tutu, linen slippers, on wooden base, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1999

Watch a Video of the *Little Dancer Aged Fourteen*

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