With the opening of the Palais Garnier, the new opera house of Paris, in 1875, ballet and opera became an important part of Parisian cultural life. Degas’ desire to celebrate modern life and his interest in the human figure led him to the subject matter of dancers, his depictions of which are among the most celebrated works of the nineteenth century. As a well-connected man in Paris society, Degas was able to gain privileged access to dance rehearsals, dressing rooms and the stage wings, observing the dancers with unprecedented intimacy as they stretched, rehearsed and prepared for their performances.
‘Draw a dancing figure, with a little skill, you should be able to create an illusion for a short time. But however painstakingly you study your adaptation, you will achieve nothing more than an insubstantial silhouette, lacking all notions of mass and of volume and devoid of precision. You will achieve truth only through modelling because this is an art that puts an artist under an obligation to neglect none of the essentials.’
The three-dimensional medium of sculpture offered him the most possibilities for capturing the grace and beauty of these figures and for exploring the flexibility of their bodies. In the present work, the artist has rendered the dancer in the arabesque position, with her left leg outstretched behind and her arms placed forward, counterbalancing her weight. As Alison Luch highlights: 'of all the movements of the classical ballet, the arabesque seems to have held the greatest fascination for Degas as a sculptor' (Alison Luchs, 'The Degas Waxes' in Art for the Nation: Gifts in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1991, p. 196).
The position of the arabesque is impossible to hold for an extended period of time. As one of the most animated poses of the ballet, it was a subject Degas frequently returned to in sculpture but also in painting (fig. 1). He seemingly delighted in the challenge of capturing the transient pose in a fixed sculptural form; like the dancer who has to achieve a gruelling balance while making it look effortless, Degas also had to master balance, control and expressive effect in his manipulation of sculptural mass and form. The arabesque’s gravitational challenge became an obsession for him - he supposedly ranted to the painter Georges Jeanniot: ‘what the work (a sculptural arabesque) has cost in research and rage; balance, above all, is so difficult to achieve’ (quoted in Suzanne Glover Lindsay, Edgar Degas Sculpture, New York, 2010, p. 197). Danseuse, arabesque ouverte sur la jambe droite, bras droit à terre showcases the artist’s remarkable acuity of observation and brilliantly conveys the weight of her limbs while preserving the delicate sensibility of the pose. Degas conveys the technical rigour of the dancer with an expressive immediacy that displays control and balance, highlighting the masterfulness of both dancer and artist.
After Degas’ death in 1917, his heirs authorised the A.A. Hébrard foundry to cast the artist's 73 original wax models into bronze multiples. According to their original agreement, 22 bronze casts would be made for each figure: one set for Degas’s heirs, marked HER; one for the foundry marked HER.D and 20 sets for sale, marked A-T. Each bronze is thus numbered alpha-numerically, indicating both the foundry’s inventory number and the series to which it belongs. However, Hébrard sometimes did not complete a full letter series or, he produced more examples that were originally contracted, resulting in many variations in the edition sizes for each figure. The present cast is marked 2D, and from this series, 17 casts have been located.
Danseuse, arabesque ouverte sur la jambe droite, bras droit à terre was possibly first owned by Walther Halvorsen, a Norwegian who purchased ten series of Degas’ sculptures from Hébrard on 5th July 1918. Athough the D series was among those nominally acquired by Halvorsen it is unclear whether he eve took possession of the complete series, due to delays with some of the castings. The work was certainly cast by 1929 when it was acquired by legendary art dealer Justin K. Thannhauser in whose collection it remained until circa 1960.