Hand patinated reproduction. Mold made from a print of the original work made by Hilaire Germain Edgar de Gas, known as Degas.
Even though he was known mainly as a painter, from the 1860s onwards, modelling occupied an increasingly important place in the work of Degas, and it became his principal mode of expression by the end of his career.
Except for The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer, exhibited in 1881, his sculptures were unknown during his lifetime.
They were discovered only after he died in 1917.
If he turned to the same subjects - horses, dances, bathing women - it is because these sculptures were only intended to improve his paintings.
Most of the surviving studies of dancers come from the years 1880-1890.
