New Edgar Degas: Spanish Dancer Sculpture Sculpture

An artful gift inspired by The Met collection.Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917) found a ready source of inspiration in dancers; his many paintings, drawings, and sculptures of the subject explore subtle variations in the dynamics of a dancer’s movement. This graceful sculpture reproduces Degas’s Spanish Dancer, modeled probably around 1884 and cast in 1920 at the Parisian foundry A. A. Hébrard et Cie. Upon Degas’s death in 1917, more than 150 figurative sculptures were found in his studio. Most were made of fragile wax, clay, and plastiline (a wax- and oil-based modeling material), and many had deteriorated, with only a few preserved in copies cast from them in plaster. Although Degas didn’t favor reproducing his sculptures in more permanent materials, his heirs authorized a series of 72 bronze copies. The series was completed before May 1921 when it was exhibited in Paris. Edition A, comprising the first and best casts of the series, was reserved for the Impressionist collector Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, who later bequeathed this version of Spanish Dancer to The Met.