“People call me the painter of the dancing girls. It never occurred to me that my great interest in dancers was to paint the movement and paint beautiful clothes. ”

-Edgar Degas 

Edgar Degas is a French painter, sculptor and illustrator born in Paris, 1834. At the beginning of his career, Degas wanted to study classical art and study historical themes. In 1854, he was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts). He received a good academic education. Then he went to Italy and developed himself by copying the works of important Renaissance artists such as Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian. A few years after returning from Italy in 1859, he met Edouard Manet, who stood up in academic art at that time and advocated painting realistic everyday life. Thanks to this friendship, which is perhaps a turning point for his career, he attended the meetings of painters named Café Guerbois, who will later be called impressionists. Although most of them agree with his opinion, he rejected his impressionist name and said that he preferred to be recognized as a realist [1,2].

Degas shifted its style from classic to modern original observations towards the end of the 1860s. The painter who often portrays working women, hat hats, laundries, horses and jockeys is best known for her dance-themed paintings [1]. It produced approximately 1500 depictions of dancers [3].

His passion for painting ballerinas started with frequent visits to the Paris Opera House at that time. In addition to going to the spectators as a spectator, he could both go behind the scenes with a friend playing in the orchestra and make observations by participating in rehearsals with a picture book in his hands [4,7]. Over time, it has become part of the tradition-filled pink-white world of the Paris Opera House, developing new techniques to draw and paint what it sees here [5].

What attracted Degas to ballet as an artistic inspiration was probably finding a world that reflected his view of both classical beauty and modern realism [5,6]. Elegance, color and movement in the essence of the ballet fascinated Edgar Degas throughout his art life [4]. His training and rehearsals were the focus of his attention rather than the stage performance of the dancers [7]. In her paintings, she reflects the individuality and limited worlds of the dancer girls working as a group in a corner, correcting her dress, leaning on the shoelaces of her shoes, gliding like a swan, and evoking a rhythm and harmony in this way [8].

Little Dancer of Fourteen Years

The 14-year-old Little Dancer, completed in 1881, was the only statue Degas exhibited while alive [9]. After his death in 1917, more than 150 sculptures were found in his studio. Most of the sculptures were made of wax and clay [10]. At that time, Degas disagreed with his manager’s idea to produce bronze copies of the wax ballerina statue, but two months after his death, his heirs signed an agreement to make bronze copies [11]. Today 28 bronze copies are exhibited in many famous museums of the world [3].

She was a ballet school student named Marie Genevieve van Goethem, modeling this stunning statue. Perhaps there were various speculations about the life of this girl, who was a bit of a model, and the sculpture was the target of serious criticism at the time she was made. Since the sculptures were made of marble or bronze at that time, wax was an unusual material.

In addition, the details such as the fact that the statue had actual clothes on it, and that its hair was made of horse hair were also deceived. Because of the dislocated jaw structure and narrow forehead, there were even those who said the model looked like a monkey, and found it scary and primitive. Regardless, the 14-year-old Little Dancer is one of the most beloved sculptures in modern art history today [9].