94-490: The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (French: La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans ) is a sculpture begun c. 1880 by Edgar Degas of a young student of the Paris Opera Ballet dance school, a Belgian named Marie van Goethem . The sculpture is one-third life size and was originally sculpted in wax, a somewhat unusual choice of medium for the time. It is dressed in a real bodice , tutu and ballet slippers and has
188-449: A history painter , a calling for which he was well prepared by his rigorous academic training and close study of classical Western art. In his early thirties he changed course, and by bringing the traditional methods of a history painter to bear on contemporary subject matter, he became a classical painter of modern life. Degas was born in Paris , France , into a moderately wealthy family. He
282-408: A "blossoming". In part Degas' originality consisted in disregarding the smooth, full surfaces and contours of classical sculpture ... [and] in garnishing his little statue with real hair and clothing made to scale like the accoutrements for a doll. These relatively "real" additions heightened the illusion, but they also posed searching questions, such as what can be referred to as "real" when art
376-601: A Silver Spoon , was published in 1992. Mellon was born in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania, on June 11, 1907, the son of Andrew W. Mellon , U.S. Secretary of the Treasury from 1921 to 1932, and Nora McMullen of Hertford Castle , England and brother of Ailsa Mellon-Bruce. When he was 5 years old his parents divorced. He graduated from The Choate School , now Choate Rosemary Hall, in Wallingford, Connecticut , in 1925, where he wrote for
470-544: A cameo in the 2009 fantasy comedy film Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian . The 2013 novel The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan centers upon the life of Marie van Goethem , the model for this piece. It traces the statue's development over several years, and considers how Marie may have reacted to its appearance. Buchanan draws parallels between Degas' work, the criminal theories of Cesare Lombroso , and
564-436: A cloth tutu, it provoked a strong reaction from critics, most of whom found its realism extraordinary but denounced the dancer as ugly. In a review, J.-K. Huysmans wrote: "The terrible reality of this statuette evidently produces uneasiness in the spectators; all their notions about sculpture, about those cold inanimate whitenesses ... are here overturned. The fact is that with his first attempt Monsieur Degas has revolutionized
658-455: A conundrum to art historians in search of a literary source— Thérèse Raquin has been suggested —but it may be a depiction of prostitution . As his subject matter changed, so, too, did Degas's technique. The dark palette that bore the influence of Dutch painting gave way to the use of vivid colors and bold brushstrokes. Paintings such as Place de la Concorde read as "snapshots," freezing moments of time to portray them accurately, imparting
752-621: A copyist in the Louvre Museum , but his father expected him to go to law school . Degas duly enrolled at the Faculty of Law of the University of Paris in November 1853 but applied little effort to his studies. In 1855, he met Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres , whom he revered and whose advice he never forgot: "Draw lines, young man, and still more lines, both from life and from memory, and you will become
846-757: A detail that had caught his attention: a secondary figure, or a head which he treated as a portrait. Upon his return to France in 1859, Degas moved into a Paris studio large enough to permit him to begin painting The Bellelli Family —an imposing canvas he intended for exhibition in the Salon , although it remained unfinished until 1867. He also began work on several history paintings : Alexander and Bucephalus and The Daughter of Jephthah in 1859–60; Sémiramis Building Babylon in 1860; and Young Spartans Exercising around 1860. In 1861, Degas visited his childhood friend Paul Valpinçon in Ménil-Hubert-en-Exmes , and made
940-945: A generous bequest to the Center at the time of his death. The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art was founded in 1970 through a generous grant to Yale University , as a London-based affiliate of the New Haven center, to encourage study of British art and culture both at the undergraduate and the research scholar levels. Mellon also provided important leadership gifts to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia , as well as Choate Rosemary Hall . Mellon owned many thoroughbred horses under his Rokeby Stables , including Kentucky Derby winner Sea Hero . Two of his horses, Arts and Letters and Fort Marcy , were named American Horse of
1034-678: A good artist." In April of that year Degas was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts . He studied drawing there with Louis Lamothe , under whose guidance he flourished, following the style of Ingres. In July 1856, Degas traveled to Italy , where he would remain for the next three years. In 1858, while staying with his aunt's family in Naples , he made the first studies for his early masterpiece The Bellelli Family . He also drew and painted numerous copies of works by Michelangelo , Raphael , Titian , and other Renaissance artists, but—contrary to conventional practice—he usually selected from an altarpiece
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#17328456474331128-640: A hint of anti-Semitism. In 1881, he exhibited two pastels, Criminal Physiognomies , that depicted juvenile gang members recently convicted of murder in the "Abadie Affair". Degas had attended their trial with sketchbook in hand, and his numerous drawings of the defendants reveal his interest in the atavistic features thought by some 19th-century scientists to be evidence of innate criminality. In his paintings of dancers and laundresses, he reveals their occupations not only by their dress and activities but also by their body type: his ballerinas exhibit an athletic physicality, while his laundresses are heavy and solid. By
1222-480: A hundred things and not finish one of them", and was in any case notoriously reluctant to consider a painting complete. His interest in portraiture led Degas to study carefully the ways in which a person's social stature or form of employment may be revealed by their physiognomy , posture, dress, and other attributes. In his 1879 Portraits, At the Stock Exchange , he portrayed a group of Jewish businessmen with
1316-451: A job. From 1870 Degas increasingly painted ballet subjects, partly because they sold well and provided him with needed income after his brother's debts had left the family bankrupt. Degas began to paint café life as well, in works such as L'Absinthe and Singer with a Glove . His paintings often hinted at narrative content in a way that was highly ambiguous; for example, Interior (which has also been called The Rape ) has presented
1410-466: A less idealized treatment of the figure is already apparent. During his early career, Degas also painted portraits of individuals and groups; an example of the latter is The Bellelli Family ( c. 1858–67 ), an ambitious and psychologically poignant portrayal of his aunt, her husband, and their children. In this painting, as in Young Spartans Exercising and many later works, Degas
1504-523: A little-known group of 73 plaster casts, more or less closely resembling Degas's original wax sculptures, was presented as having been discovered among the materials bought by the Airaindor Foundry (later known as Airaindor-Valsuani) from Hébrard's descendants. Bronzes cast from these plasters were issued between 2004 and 2016 by Airaindor-Valsuani in editions inconsistently marked and thus of unknown size. There has been substantial controversy concerning
1598-662: A metal armature, rope, and paintbrushes covered by clay for structural support. The Little Dancer wax sculpture we see today is a reworked version of the original sculpture that was shown in 1881. After seeing the wax sculpture in Degas’ living quarters in April 1903, the New York collector Louisine Havemeyer expressed interest in buying the wax. After proposing a bronze or wax cast of the sculpture, which Mrs. Havemeyer refused, Degas took his wax figure upstairs to his working studio and told Vollard he
1692-462: A model upon learning she was Protestant . Although Degas painted a number of Jewish subjects from 1865 to 1870, his 1879 painting Portraits at the Stock Exchange may be a watershed in his political opinions. The painting is a portrait of the Jewish banker Ernest May—who may have commissioned the work and was its first owner—and is widely regarded as anti-Semitic by modern experts. The facial features of
1786-560: A modern context. He began to paint women at work, milliners and laundresses . His milliner series is interpreted as artistic self-reflection. Mlle. Fiocre in the Ballet La Source , exhibited in the Salon of 1868, was his first major work to introduce a subject with which he would become especially identified, dancers. In many subsequent paintings, dancers were shown backstage or in rehearsal, emphasizing their status as professionals doing
1880-477: A reworked version of the musical, now called Marie, Dancing Still premiered at the 5th Avenue Theater in Seattle. Tiler Peck, principal dancer of New York City Ballet, led the cast and Susan Stroman was the director and choreographer for the production. The sculpture is prominently featured in the 1993 thriller film Malice . It appears in the 2007 Little Einsteins episode, "The Wind-Up Toy Prince". It makes
1974-478: A sense of movement. The lack of color in the 1874 Ballet Rehearsal on Stage and the 1876 The Ballet Instructor can be said to link with his interest in the new technique of photography. The changes to his palette, brushwork, and sense of composition all evidence the influence that both the Impressionist movement and modern photography, with its spontaneous images and off-kilter angles, had on his work. Blurring
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#17328456474332068-487: A wig of real hair. All but a hair ribbon and the tutu are covered in wax. The 28 bronze repetitions that appear in museums and galleries around the world today were cast after Degas' death. The tutus worn by the bronzes vary from museum to museum. The exact relationship between Marie van Goethem and Edgar Degas is a matter of debate. It was common in 1880 for the "Petits Rats" of the Paris Opera to seek protectors from among
2162-555: Is Degas' reworked second version of his wax figure. At some point before Degas extensively reworked his sculpture, he allowed a plaster to be cast from the wax figure. This recently re-discovered plaster records the Little Dancer ’s original pose, bodice, and hairdo. The plaster is now in a private collection in the United States. The original wax sculpture was acquired by Paul Mellon in 1956. Beginning in 1985, Mr and Mrs Mellon gave
2256-457: Is concerned. The suite of pastels depicting nudes that Degas exhibited in the eighth Impressionist Exhibition in 1886 produced "the most concentrated body of critical writing on the artist during his lifetime ... The overall reaction was positive and laudatory". Recognized as an important artist in his lifetime, Degas is now considered "one of the founders of Impressionism". Though his work crossed many stylistic boundaries, his involvement with
2350-519: Is often identified as an Impressionist , an understandable but insufficient description. Impressionism originated in the 1860s and 1870s and grew, in part, from the realism of painters such as Courbet and Corot . The Impressionists painted the realities of the world around them using bright, "dazzling" colors, concentrating primarily on the effects of light, and hoping to infuse their scenes with immediacy. They wanted to express their visual experience in that exact moment. Technically, Degas differs from
2444-646: Is – "contorted, people thought it was a deliberate image of ugliness, but you could also say it's the image of a sickly gawky adolescent who is being made to do something she doesn't totally want to do." When the La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans was shown in Paris at the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition of 1881, it received mixed reviews. Joris-Karl Huysmans called it "the first truly modern attempt at sculpture I know." Certain critics were shocked by
2538-660: The Chrysler Triple Crown Challenge to the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation. Furthermore, he requested that double that amount be raised in response to his donation. That goal was met during the 1995–1996 fiscal year. Upon his death, he left yet another $ 2.5 million to the Foundation's endowment. In 1999, Paul Mellon bequeathed $ 8 million to the University of Cambridge in England for
2632-467: The Fitzwilliam Museum . During his lifetime he agreed that £1 million of that sum could be allocated to the museum's courtyard development and, under the terms of his will, following his death in 1999, his executors subsequently allocated a further $ 12.5 million to complete the renovations associated with the courtyard, including the re-lighting of all of the museum's galleries. The remaining balance
2726-511: The Lycée Louis-le-Grand . His mother died when he was thirteen, and the main influences on him for the remainder of his youth were his father and several unmarried uncles. Degas began to paint early in life. By the time he graduated from the Lycée with a baccalauréat in literature in 1853, at age 18, he had turned a room in his home into an artist's studio. Upon graduating, he registered as
2820-693: The Morale Operations Branch of the Office of Strategic Services in Europe. He rose to the rank of major and was the recipient of four battle stars in the European Theatre of Operations . While Mellon did not share his father's interest in business, the two found common ground in their love of art and philanthropy. Shortly before Andrew Mellon's death in 1937, construction began on the West Building of
2914-614: The National Gallery of Art 49 Degas waxes, 10 bronzes and 2 plasters, the largest group of original Degas sculptures. Little Dancer was among the bequests. In 1997, the Airaindor-Valsuani foundry in France began casting a limited edition of Degas bronzes from the pre-1903 Little Dancer plaster. One such Little Dancer bronze is owned by the M.T. Abraham Foundation , which, at times, is lent to other institutions and museums including
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3008-464: The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. , for which Andrew Mellon had provided funds. Four years later Paul Mellon presented both the building by John Russell Pope and his father's collection of 115 paintings to the nation. He served on the museum's board for more than four decades: as trustee, as president (twice), as board chair, and as honorary trustee. Mellon commissioned I. M. Pei to build
3102-579: The University of Cambridge , receiving a BA in 1931, while his father served as U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's from 1932 to 1933. Mellon returned to Pittsburgh , to work for Mellon Bank and other businesses for six months. He enrolled at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland in 1940 but six months later joined the United States Army , asking to join the cavalry . Mellon served with
3196-629: The Yale Center for British Art . In 1930, he was a founding member, alongside Sir Timothy William Gowers, of the CRABS, the Clare Rugby And Boating Society, the oldest of the collegiate Gentlemen's societies still active. In 1938, he received an Oxbridge MA from Clare College, Cambridge . He was a major benefactor to Clare College's Forbes-Mellon Library, opened in 1986. After graduating from Yale University , he went to England to study at
3290-823: The wealthiest Americans , it estimated that Paul Mellon, his sister Ailsa Mellon Bruce , and his cousins Sarah Mellon and Richard King Mellon , were all among the richest eight people in the United States, with fortunes between $ 400 million and $ 500 million each (between about $ 4.3 billion and $ 7.6 billion in today's dollars). Mellon was married to Mary Conover Brown from 1935 until her death in 1946. They had two children, Catherine Conover Mellon (first wife of John Warner ) and Timothy Mellon . In 1948, Paul Mellon married his second wife, Rachel Lambert Mellon (a.k.a. Bunny) (August 9, 1910–March 17, 2014) who had two children, Stacy Lloyd III and Eliza, Viscountess Moore with her first husband, Mr. Stacy Barcroft Lloyd, Jr. whom she had divorced in 1948. Mellon's autobiography, Reflections in
3384-413: The 1960s, along with the funding to create an appropriate museum to house it (designed by Louis Kahn ). He characteristically insisted that it not be named in honor of him, but rather would be called the Yale Center for British Art , to encourage others to support it as well. Mellon also provided extensive endowment support to fund not only operations but also an ongoing program of acquisitions, and he made
3478-645: The British Empire (KBE) in 1974, awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1985, elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992, and awarded the National Humanities Medal in 1997. In 1978, Mellon received the S. Roger Horchow Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards . In 1935, he married Mary Conover Brown and
3572-524: The East Building and, with his sister Ailsa, provided funds for its construction in the late 1970s. Over the years he and his wife Bunny donated more than 1,000 works to the National Gallery of Art, among them many French and American masterworks. In 1936, Mellon purchased his first British painting, Pumpkin with a Stable-lad by George Stubbs , who became a lifetime favorite of Mellon's. Beginning in
3666-625: The Impressionist movement. Degas's style reflects his deep respect for the old masters (he was an enthusiastic copyist well into middle age) and his great admiration for Ingres and Delacroix. He was also a collector of Japanese prints , whose compositional principles influenced his work, as did the vigorous realism of popular illustrators such as Daumier and Gavarni . Although famous for horses and dancers, Degas began with conventional historical paintings such as The Daughter of Jephthah ( c. 1859–61 ) and Young Spartans Exercising ( c. 1860–62 ), in which his gradual progress toward
3760-478: The Impressionists in that he continually belittled their practice of painting en plein air . You know what I think of people who work out in the open. If I were the government I would have a special brigade of gendarmes to keep an eye on artists who paint landscapes from nature. Oh, I don't mean to kill anyone; just a little dose of bird-shot now and then as a warning. "He was often as anti-impressionist as
3854-448: The Impressionists, however, and rejected the rigid rules and judgments of the Salon. Degas's work was controversial, but was generally admired for its draftsmanship. His La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans , or Little Dancer of Fourteen Years , which he displayed at the sixth Impressionist exhibition in 1881, was probably his most controversial piece; some critics decried what they thought its "appalling ugliness" while others saw in it
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3948-502: The Kahn-designed British Art Center demonstrated Mellon's commitment to bringing modern architecture to Yale. Perhaps most importantly, the additional undergraduate capacity that these colleges provided were a critical prerequisite to the ability of the university to transition to co-education. Beyond these capital gifts, Mellon endowed the masterships and deanships of each of Yale's 12 residential colleges. He created
4042-609: The Mellon Senior Forum program, which provides a weekly meal for seniors in each of the residential colleges where they can share progress on their senior essays and projects with one another. Mellon was active in the humanities at Yale. He provided the funding necessary to create the Directed Studies program of intense freshman-year focus on the humanities. He supported significantly the undergraduate theater studies program, and endowed named professorships in schools throughout
4136-629: The Old Dominion Foundation in 1941 and the Bollingen Foundation in 1945, both to support advancement and learning of the humanities and liberal education . The Bollingen Foundation published over 100 books before closing in 1969, the same year the assets of the Old Dominion Foundation were merged into those of his sister Ailsa's Avalon Foundation. The combined organization was renamed The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in honor of their father. Paul Mellon's foremost philanthropic interest
4230-846: The State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Like the various states of many of Degas' prints, the Valsuani bronzes record the first version of Degas' Little Dancer , while the Hébrard casts record the second and final state of the sculpture. In 1998, art historian Richard Kendall published a scholarly account of the history of Degas's sculpture, Degas and the Little Dancer , with contributions by Douglas Druick and Arthur Beale. A 2003 ballet with choreography by Patrice Bart and music by Denis Levaillant, La Petite Danseuse de Degas ,
4324-536: The University, particularly in the humanities. Mellon was highly supportive of causes that advanced the preservation of horses, including the United States Jockey Club's Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation. This organization allocates grants towards specific research projects for the safety, welfare, longevity and improvement of life for racehorses. He donated the $ 1 million bonus that Sea Hero won in
4418-596: The Year in 1969 and 1970 respectively. Both are inductees in the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame . He also owned three European champions, Mill Reef , Forrest Flower , and Gold and Ivory . Mill Reef was the #8 rated horse in the world for the 20th Century in A Century of Champions , by John Randall and Tony Morris. Mellon won the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Breeder in 1971 and again in 1986. Mellon established
4512-400: The anti-Semitic "Anti-Dreyfusards" until his death. During his life, public reception of Degas's work ranged from admiration to contempt. As a promising artist in the conventional mode, Degas had a number of paintings accepted in the Salon between 1865 and 1870. These works received praise from Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and the critic Jules-Antoine Castagnary . He soon joined forces with
4606-414: The authenticity of these plasters as well as the circumstances and date of their creation as proposed by their promoters. While several museum and academic professionals accept them as presented, most of the recognized Degas scholars have declined to comment. Degas, who believed that "the artist must live alone, and his private life must remain unknown", lived an outwardly uneventful life. In company he
4700-609: The banker in profile have been directly compared to those in the anti-Semitic cartoons rampant in Paris at the time, while those of the background characters have drawn comparisons to Degas' earlier work Criminal Physiognomies . The Dreyfus Affair , which divided opinion in Paris from the 1890s to the early 1900s, intensified his anti-Semitism. By the mid-1890s, he had broken off relations with all of his Jewish friends, publicly disavowed his previous friendships with Jewish artists, and refused to use models who he believed might be Jewish. He remained an outspoken anti-Semite and member of
4794-433: The casting process. One copy of La Petite Danseuse is currently owned by the creator and owner of Auto Trader , John Madejski . He stated that he bought the sculpture by accident. That copy was sold for £13,257,250 ($ 19,077,250) at Sotheby's on 3 February 2009. Another Hébrard Little Dancer bronze failed to sell at a November 2011 auction at Christie's . To construct the statue, Degas used pigmented beeswax, with
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#17328456474334888-537: The couple, who had two children, Catherine and Timothy , moved to Virginia . After his wife Mary's death in 1946 from an asthma attack, he married Rachel Lambert Lloyd , known as "Bunny", the former wife of Stacy Barcroft Lloyd Jr . She was a descendant of the Lambert family who formulated and marketed Listerine and an heiress to the Warner-Lambert corporate fortune (Warner-Lambert is now part of Pfizer , following
4982-617: The critics who reviewed the shows", according to art historian Carol Armstrong ; as Degas himself explained, "no art was ever less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and of the study of the great masters; of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament, I know nothing." Nonetheless, he is described more accurately as an Impressionist than as a member of any other movement. His scenes of Parisian life, his off-center compositions, his experiments with color and form, and his friendship with several key Impressionist artists—most notably Mary Cassatt and Manet—all relate him intimately to
5076-527: The decade beginning in 1874. Disenchanted by now with the Salon, he instead joined a group of young artists who were organizing an independent exhibiting society. The group soon became known as the Impressionists. Between 1874 and 1886, they mounted eight art shows, known as the Impressionist Exhibitions. Degas took a leading role in organizing the exhibitions, and showed his work in all but one of them, despite his persistent conflicts with others in
5170-407: The decision to have the bronze repetitions of La Petite Danseuse and other wax and mixed-media sculptures cast. The casting took place at the Hébrard foundry in Paris from 1920 until 1936 when the Hébrard foundry went bankrupt and closed. Thereafter, "Hébrard" Degas Little Dancer bronzes were cast at the Valsuani foundry in Paris until the mid-1970s. Sixty-nine of Degas' wax sculptures survived
5264-521: The distinction between portraiture and genre pieces, he painted his bassoonist friend, Désiré Dihau , in The Orchestra of the Opera (c. 1870) as one of fourteen musicians in an orchestra pit, viewed as though by a member of the audience. Above the musicians can be seen only the legs and tutus of the dancers onstage, their figures cropped by the edge of the painting. Art historian Charles Stuckey has compared
5358-607: The earliest of his many studies of horses. He exhibited at the Salon for the first time in 1865, when the jury accepted his painting Scene of War in the Middle Ages , which attracted little attention. Although he exhibited annually in the Salon during the next five years, he submitted no more history paintings, and his Scene from the Steeplechase: The Fallen Jockey (Salon of 1866) signaled his growing commitment to contemporary subject matter. The change in his art
5452-521: The end of 1907, and is believed to have continued making sculptures as late as 1910, he apparently ceased working in 1912, when the impending demolition of his longtime residence on the rue Victor Massé forced him to move to quarters on the Boulevard de Clichy . He never married, and spent the last years of his life, nearly blind, restlessly wandering the streets of Paris before dying in September 1917. Degas
5546-614: The figure, the pictures created in this late period of his life bear little superficial resemblance to his early paintings. In point of fact, these paintings—created late in his life and after the heyday of the Impressionist movement—most vividly use the coloristic techniques of Impressionism. For all the stylistic evolution, certain features of Degas's work remained the same throughout his life. He always painted indoors, preferring to work in his studio from memory, photographs, or live models. The figure remained his primary subject; his few landscapes were produced from memory or imagination. It
5640-409: The fore and he broke with all his Jewish friends. His argumentative nature was deplored by Renoir, who said of him: "What a creature he was, that Degas! All his friends had to leave him; I was one of the last to go, but even I couldn't stay till the end." After 1890, Degas's eyesight, which had long troubled him, deteriorated further. Although he is known to have been working in pastel as late as
5734-520: The group's exhibitions. The resulting rancor within the group contributed to its disbanding in 1886. As his financial situation improved through sales of his own work, he was able to indulge his passion for collecting works by artists he admired: old masters such as El Greco and such contemporaries as Manet , Cassatt , Pissarro , Cézanne , Gauguin , Van Gogh , and Édouard Brandon . Three artists he idolized, Ingres , Delacroix , and Daumier , were especially well represented in his collection. In
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#17328456474335828-523: The group. He had little in common with Monet and the other landscape painters in the group, whom he mocked for painting outdoors . Conservative in his social attitudes, he abhorred the scandal created by the exhibitions, as well as the publicity and advertising that his colleagues sought. He also deeply disliked being associated with the term "Impressionist", which the press had coined and popularized, and insisted on including non-Impressionist artists such as Jean-Louis Forain and Jean-François Raffaëlli in
5922-481: The late 1880s, Degas also developed a passion for photography. He photographed many of his friends, often by lamplight, as in his double portrait of Renoir and Mallarmé . Other photographs, depicting dancers and nudes, were used for reference in some of Degas's drawings, and paintings. As the years passed, Degas became isolated, due in part to his belief that a painter could have no personal life. The Dreyfus Affair controversy brought his anti-Semitic leanings to
6016-513: The late 1950s, with the help of English art historian Basil Taylor, Mellon amassed a major collection by the mid-1960s. London art dealer Geoffrey Agnew once said of his acquisitions: "It took an American collector to make the English look again at their own paintings." Mellon's collection was catalogued by Dudley Snelgrove and Judy Egerton . Mellon granted his extensive collection of British art, rare books, and related materials to Yale University in
6110-606: The later 1870s, Degas had mastered not only the traditional medium of oil on canvas , but pastel as well. The dry medium, which he applied in complex layers and textures, enabled him more easily to reconcile his facility for line with a growing interest in expressive color. In the mid-1870s, he also returned to the medium of etching , which he had neglected for ten years. At first he was guided in this by his old friend Ludovic-Napoléon Lepic , himself an innovator in its use, and began experimenting with lithography and monotype . He produced some 300 monotypes over two periods, from
6204-735: The literary magazine. He then went on to graduate from Yale College , where he was a member of the Chi Psi fraternity, Scroll and Key , and served as vice-chairman of the Yale Daily News . He was a great benefactor of his alma maters, donating to the Forbes-Mellon Library at the University of Cambridge , the Mellon Arts Center and the Mellon (now Icahn) Science Center to Choate, two residential colleges at Yale ( Ezra Stiles and Morse ), and
6298-406: The mid-1870s to the mid-1880s and again in the early 1890s. He was especially fascinated by the effects produced by monotype and frequently reworked the printed images with pastel. By 1880, sculpture had become one more strand to Degas's continuing endeavor to explore different media, although the artist displayed only one sculpture publicly during his lifetime. These changes in media engendered
6392-579: The other major figures of Impressionism and their exhibitions, his dynamic paintings and sketches of everyday life and activities, and his bold color experiments, served to finally tie him to the Impressionist movement as one of its greatest artists. Although Degas had no formal pupils, he greatly influenced several important painters, most notably Jean-Louis Forain , Mary Cassatt, and Walter Sickert ; his greatest admirer may have been Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec . Paul Mellon Paul Mellon (June 11, 1907 – February 1, 1999, Upperville, Virginia )
6486-513: The paintings that Degas would produce in later life. Degas began to draw and paint women drying themselves with towels, combing their hair, and bathing (see: After the Bath, Woman drying herself ). The strokes that model the form are scribbled more freely than before; backgrounds are simplified. The meticulous naturalism of his youth gave way to an increasing abstraction of form. Except for his characteristically brilliant draftsmanship and obsession with
6580-546: The piece, and the dancer was compared to a monkey and a Mexica . One critic, Paul Mantz, called her the "flower of precocious depravity," with a face "marked by the hateful promise of every vice" and "bearing the signs of a profoundly heinous character." Comparisons with older art were made, perhaps partly because it was exhibited in a glass case, like classical sculpture in the Louvre , and was dressed in wig and clothes. After Degas' death, his heirs (brother and sister's children) made
6674-464: The sculptures were not created as aids to painting, although the artist habitually explored ways of linking graphic art and oil painting, drawing and pastel, sculpture and photography. Degas assigned the same significance to sculpture as to drawing: "Drawing is a way of thinking, modelling another". After Degas's death, his heirs found in his studio 150 wax sculptures, many in disrepair. They consulted foundry owner Adrien Hébrard, who concluded that 74 of
6768-501: The stage adaptation of Émile Zola's L'Assommoir . It has recently been featured in the 2020 Netflix drama series Tiny Pretty Things , and in the 2022 HBO original series The Gilded Age , episode Irresistible Change . Edgar Degas Edgar Degas ( UK : / ˈ d eɪ ɡ ɑː / , US : / d eɪ ˈ ɡ ɑː , d ə ˈ ɡ ɑː / ; born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas , French: [ilɛːʁ ʒɛʁmɛ̃ ɛdɡaʁ də ɡa] ; 19 July 1834 – 27 September 1917)
6862-623: The stars. He was also a major benefactor of Clare College and Clare Hall , both in Cambridge , England. Indeed, Clare Hall, founded 1966, gains much from his benefaction; his generous bequest serves the intellectual needs of the graduate college members. The Mellon Fellowship is another example of his generosity, permitting the reciprocal exchange of two students from Yale and two from Clare College for graduate study in each other's institutions. He developed his great love of England and English culture while studying at Clare College from 1929-1931. "It
6956-418: The traditions of sculpture as he has long since shaken the conventions of painting." Degas created a substantial number of other sculptures during a span of four decades, but they remained unseen by the public until a posthumous exhibition in 1918. Neither The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years nor any of Degas's other sculptures were cast in bronze during the artist's lifetime. Degas scholars have agreed that
7050-716: The viewpoint to that of a distracted spectator at a ballet, and says that "it is Degas' fascination with the depiction of movement, including the movement of a spectator's eyes as during a random glance, that is properly speaking 'Impressionist'." Degas's mature style is distinguished by conspicuously unfinished passages, even in otherwise tightly rendered paintings. He frequently blamed his eye troubles for his inability to finish, an explanation that met with some skepticism from colleagues and collectors who reasoned, as Stuckey explains, that "his pictures could hardly have been executed by anyone with inadequate vision". The artist provided another clue when he described his predilection "to begin
7144-514: The waxes could be cast in bronze . It is assumed that, except for the Little Dancer Aged Fourteen , all Degas bronzes worldwide are cast from surmoulages [ fr ] (i.e., cast from bronze masters). A surmoulage bronze is a bit smaller, and shows less surface detail, than its original bronze mold. The Hébrard Foundry cast the bronzes from 1919 until 1936, and closed down in 1937, shortly before Hébrard's death. In 2004,
7238-453: The wealthy visitors at the back door of the opera. Realistic wax figures with real hair and real clothes had also been popular in religious, Folk, and fine arts for centuries before Degas created his Little Dancer . The arms are taut, and the legs and feet are placed in a ballet position akin to fourth position at rest, and there is tension in the pose, an image of a ballerina being put through her paces, not posing in an angelic way. Her face
7332-452: Was a French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings. Degas also produced bronze sculptures , prints , and drawings. Degas is especially identified with the subject of dance; more than half of his works depict dancers. Although Degas is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism , he rejected the term, preferring to be called a realist , and did not paint outdoors as many Impressionists did. Degas
7426-422: Was a superb draftsman , and particularly masterly in depicting movement, as can be seen in his rendition of dancers and bathing female nudes . In addition to ballet dancers and bathing women, Degas painted racehorses and racing jockeys , as well as portraits. His portraits are notable for their psychological complexity and their portrayal of human isolation. At the beginning of his career, Degas wanted to be
7520-722: Was a trustee of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame and one of the only five people ever designated an "Exemplar of Racing" by the Hall of Fame. He was also inducted into the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame and the English Jockey Club Hall of Fame . Among honors, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1971, created an Honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of
7614-549: Was added to the Paul Mellon Fund which was established as a trust fund for the museum at the time of the bequest, the income from which is being used to support education, exhibitions and publications. He also helped to buy the 28,625 acres (115.8 km ) Cape Hatteras National Seashore and the 1,500 acres (610 ha) Sky Meadows State Park in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where he used to go to look at
7708-523: Was an American philanthropist and a breeder of thoroughbred racehorses . He is one of only five people ever designated an "Exemplar of Racing" by the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame . He was co-heir to one of America's greatest business fortunes, derived from the Mellon Bank created by his grandfather Thomas Mellon , his father Andrew W. Mellon , and his father's brother Richard B. Mellon . In 1957, when Fortune prepared its first list of
7802-442: Was drawn to the tensions present between men and women. In his early paintings, Degas already evidenced the mature style that he would later develop more fully by cropping subjects awkwardly and by choosing unusual viewpoints. By the late 1860s, Degas had shifted from his initial forays into history painting to an original observation of contemporary life. Racecourse scenes provided an opportunity to depict horses and their riders in
7896-608: Was found to be defective, and for the rest of his life his eye problems were a constant worry to him. After the war, Degas began in 1872 an extended stay in New Orleans , where his brother René and a number of other relatives lived. Staying at the home of his Creole uncle, Michel Musson, on Esplanade Avenue , Degas produced a number of works, many depicting family members. One of Degas's New Orleans works, A Cotton Office in New Orleans , garnered favorable attention back in France, and
7990-414: Was his alma mater, Yale University . His most generous and well-known gifts established the Yale Center for British Art , but his legacy makes itself felt across the campus. Mellon's other major gift was to provide extensive funding to support the creation of two new undergraduate residential colleges at Yale, Ezra Stiles College and Morse College . Designed by Eero Saarinen , these colleges along with
8084-546: Was his only work purchased by a museum (the Pau ) during his lifetime. Degas returned to Paris in 1873 and his father died the following year, whereupon Degas learned that his brother René had amassed enormous business debts. To preserve his family's reputation, Degas sold his house and an art collection he had inherited, and used the money to pay off his brother's debts. Dependent for the first time in his life on sales of his artwork for income, he produced much of his greatest work during
8178-587: Was influenced primarily by the example of Édouard Manet , whom Degas had met in 1864 (while both were copying the same Diego Velázquez portrait in the Louvre, according to a story that may be apocryphal). Upon the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Degas enlisted in the National Guard , where his partaking in the defense of Paris left him little time for painting. During rifle training his eyesight
8272-461: Was known for his wit, which could often be cruel. He was characterized as an "old curmudgeon" by the novelist George Moore , and he deliberately cultivated his reputation as a misanthropic bachelor. In the 1870s, Degas gravitated towards the republican circles of Léon Gambetta . However, his republicanism did not come untainted, and signs of the prejudice and irritability which would overtake him in old age were occasionally manifested. He fired
8366-404: Was most interested in the presentation of his paintings, patronizing Pierre Cluzel as a framer, and disliking ornate styles of the day, often insisting on his choices for the framing as a condition of purchase. Degas's only showing of sculpture during his life took place in 1881 when he exhibited The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years . A nearly life-size wax figure with real hair and dressed in
8460-462: Was not unusual for him to repeat a subject many times, varying the composition or treatment. He was a deliberative artist whose works, as Andrew Forge has written, "were prepared, calculated, practiced, developed in stages. They were made up of parts. The adjustment of each part to the whole, their linear arrangement, was the occasion for infinite reflection and experiment." Degas explained, "In art, nothing should look like chance, not even movement". He
8554-703: Was premiered by the Paris Opera . The 2004 BBC Two documentary The Private Life of a Masterpiece : Little Dancer Aged Fourteen closely examines the sculpture, the model, the circumstances of her life, and the critical reaction to the work. In 2014, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. premiered the stage musical, Little Dancer , inspired by the story of the young ballerina immortalized by Edgar Degas in his famous sculpture. In March 2019
8648-407: Was reworking the sculpture for Havemeyer for 40,000 francs. Degas never sold the sculpture to Mrs. Havemeyer. After Degas died, it was found in a corner of his studio. Paul Lefond, Degas’ biographer, described the Little Dancer wax after Degas’ death as "nothing but a ruin;" and Mary Cassatt telegraphed Mrs. Havemeyer "Statue Bad Condition." However, the wax sculpture we know today is not a ruin. It
8742-570: Was the oldest of five children of Célestine Musson De Gas, a Creole from New Orleans , Louisiana , and Augustin De Gas, a banker. His maternal grandfather Germain Musson was born in Port-au-Prince , Haiti , of French descent, and had settled in New Orleans in 1810. Degas (he adopted this less grandiose spelling of his family name when he became an adult) began his schooling at age eleven, enrolling in
8836-825: Was while I was at Cambridge that I embarked on the dangerous seas of collecting", Paul Mellon once said—a statement by the man who described himself as "the incurable collector" that has had profound implications for his major beneficiaries, both in the US and the UK. Mellon helped to arrange the merger of the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research , founded by his father Andrew W. Mellon and uncle Richard B. Mellon with Andrew Carnegie's Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1967 to create Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Additionally, he donated substantial funds to Carnegie Mellon. Mellon
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