In his time, Edgar Degas (1834-1917) was called the “greatest living sculptor” (despite owing much of his fame to painting) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Many of the 150 sculptures restored from the artist’s Paris studio are currently on display at the Art Gallery of Ontario. The AGO is the sole Canadian venue to exhibit the sculptures by the renowned French 19th-century artist-Degas Sculptures presents 73 bronzes from the Ny Carlsberg Glypotek museum in Copenhagen, only one of four complete sets anywhere in the world.
Born into a wealthy Parisian family, Degas attended the École des Beaux-Arts to study painting under the tutelage of Louis Lamothe, who himself was a pupil of Jean-August Dominique Ingres, the great French classicist. Degas was greatly influenced by Ingres’s traditional composition of images, and by Japanese ukiyo-e masters like Hokusai with their bold use of lines, colour and space.
These influences can be seen in the unusual perspectives and poses of Degas’ sculptures, from his horses in natural motion to his dancers captured going about their usual routines. By choosing to sculpt dancers from these angles, Degas adopted the unusual perspective of the Japanese art that influenced many other Impressionists.
There are seven rooms of the main exhibition floor of the AGO devoted to the restored sculptures. The sculptures are all representative of Degas’ main areas of interest in art: cart races and horses, nude female bathers, and especially his ballet dancers. According to the exhibit notes, “no artist before or since has been so closely associated with the subject.”
The seminal piece of work, and the only one Degas ever exhibited in his time, is Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen. At Sixth Impressionist exhibition of 1881 in Paris, Degas showed his original wax sculpture of this piece to the public, who received it with disappointing reviews. The tinted wax sculpture dressed in a real tulle tutu wearing a wig tied with a satin ribbon appalled many of the traditional lovers of sculpture, who dismissed the piece as “ugly” and “revolting”.
The classic sculpture has an interesting story behind it-Maria von Goethem, the inspiration behind Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen, was a Parisian-born dancer from a working-class Belgian family. She lived with her parents in the red-light district around the Moulin Rouge, and after working as a talented dancer at the Paris Opera, she was expelled for missing classes and disappeared. Little else is known about her and it is suspected that the young dancer took up prostitution. Edgar Degas had a certain paternal compassion for his models, especially the ballerina dancers that he painted and sculpted. As a 14-year-old, von Goethem posed for Degas, and while most of his dancer figures are devoid of distinct facial features, the attention to detail in Little Dancer-from her real tutu and hair to her serene expression-sets it apart.
During his lifetime, Degas worked largely in wax and clay because of the freedom it gave him to change the pieces as he sculpted, but Little Dancer and many other Degas sculptures were cast in bronze following the artist’s death in 1917 by the Hebrard foundry of Paris under the direct supervision of Degas’ heirs. The bronzes are noted for their stark likeness to the originals right down to the details.
Degas Sculptures runs at the Art Gallery of Ontario until January 4, 2004. The AGO is presenting several lectures related to the exhibit, including a slide show on Nov. 12 at 6:30 p.m., and a lecture by prima ballerina Veronica Tennant on Dec. 10 at 7:30 p.m. For more information, visit www.ago.net.
