Little Dancer of Fourteen Years (colour)

The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years (Fr. La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans) is a sculpture by Edgar Degas depicting a student of the Paris Opera Ballet dance school, a Belgian named Marie van Goethem. The work was started in c. 1880, first made by Degas in a reddish-brown wax in which the girl was sculpted nude. Then, aiming for naturalism in his work, he dressed the sculpture in clothing made of muslin and silk. The internal structure of the constructed using pigmented beeswax, with a metal armature rope and paintbrushes covered by clay. When the wax sculpture was first exhibited in Paris at the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition of 1881 it shocked many. Joris-Karl Huysmans called it "The first truly modern attempt at sculpture I know", whereas Paul Mantz called her the "Flower or precocious depravity". After Degas' death, his heirs decided to make a series of bronze casts.