3 Important sculptures by Degas sold in Sotheby's

gerard van weyenbergh
Jun 1
2 min read

The present sculpture is the third and most dramatically expressive of three related versions of the pose—premier, deuxième and troisième temps. The numbering of the positions does not correspond to those of the official ballet repertoire but constitute a sequence of movement that Degas imagined and wanted to capture. The first shows the dancer in an upright pose; the second shows the dancer leaning forward, balanced on one leg, and the third (the present work) culminates in the highly balanced pose of the grande arabesque, in which the opposite arm and leg are fully extended, each acting in counterbalance to the other. In looking at Degas' photographs of the ballerina in particular, it becomes evident that the abstract concept of movement was thematized in his distinctly figurative work on the subject (see fig. 1). Despite the solidity of its casting, Grande arabesque, troisième temps is a paradigm of his ability to imbue and retain a sense of motion within a static form.

Sold in Sotheby's $ 1.7 M in 2024

Grande arabesque, troisième temps

stamped Degas and with the foundry mark A.A Hébrard Cire Perdue and numbered 16/T

bronze

length: 22 ⅝ in. 57.5 cm.

Degas was fascinated with capturing the intimate moments during ballet classes while the dancers were practicing or resting between challenging “pas”. As one of the founding members of the Impressionist movement, he applied some of the Impressionist principles to his sculptural practice. John Rewald notes that “It was in his passionate search for movement that all the statuettes of dancers doing arabesques, bowing, rubbing their knees…and so on were created. All of these women were caught in poses which represent one single instant, in an arrested movement which is pregnant with the movement just completed and the one about to follow” (John Rewald, Degas's Complete Sculpture, Catalogue Raisonné, San Francisco, 1990, p. 23).

Sold in Sotheby's $ 700.000 in 2024

Danseuse, position de quatrième devant sure la jambe gauche, troisième étude

stamped Degas and with the foundry mark A.A. Hébrard Cire Perdue and numbered 58/O (on the base)

bronze

height: 23 ¼ in. 59 cm.

This bronze depicts the subject that preoccupied Edgar Degas more than any other: the dancer. Dancers dominate the artist’s oeuvre and span a wealth of media including oil paintings, pencil sketches, chalk drawings and pastels (fig. 1). However, it was in sculpture that Degas found the freedom to properly express the seemingly boundless range of movement of the body. In these sculptures, Degas disregards the decorative element of the ballet to focus purely on movement. He arrives at the absolute essentiality of the body and its gestural power.