Dancer, Looking at the Sole of her Right Foot

Degas, the chronicler of pulsating city life, was as much at home at race courses and in bars as in the world of the stage. His wax and plaster sculptural studies only became known after his death, when they were cast in bronze. Many are of dancers, either dancing or captured during the interval. The dancer holding still to look at the sole of her foot might recall the figure from antiquity removing a thorn and its various succes sors, but in antiquity, as in Neoclassicism, an unstable com position of this sort would have been unthinkable, with only one uncertain support and with the limbs directing energy both out into space and back again. It is precisely this unconventional aspect of the work along with the impressionistic treat ment of the surface that lends Degas’ sculptures their particular attraction.