Beschreibung:

Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917) Grande Arabesque, Deuxième Temps Signed 'Degas,' numbered '15' and stamped with 'Cire/Perdue/A. A. Hébrard' foundry mark on the top of the base, bronze with brown patina Height: 17 in. (43.2cm) [Hébrard 15, cast after 1948] provenance: Alex Maguy, Galerie de l'Élysée, Paris. Acquired directly from the above in 1966. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul & Sophie Sampliner. Their daughter, Mrs. Avrum Ben-Avi. By descent in the family to the present consignor. LITERATURE: John Rewald, Degas Works in Sculpture: A Complete Catalogue, Pantheon Books, New York, 1944, p. 23, no. XXXVI, pp. 88-89 (another cast illustrated). Lillian Browse, Degas Dancers, Faber & Faber, London, 1949, no. 157, p. 389 (another cast illustrated as Danseuse Nue en Arabesque ). Jacques Lassaigne, Fiorella Minervino and Simone Darses, Tout L'OEuvre Peint de Degas, Flammarion, Paris, 1974, no. S 6, p. 140 (another cast illustrated). Charles W. Millard, The Sculpture of Edgar Degas Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1976, plate 90 (another cast illustrated). Richard Thompson, The Private Degas, Thames & Hudson, London, 1987, no. 178 , pp. 130-131 (another cast illustrated). John Rewald, Degas's Complete Sculpture: Catalogue Raisonné, A. Wofsy Fine Arts, San Francisco, 1990, no. XXXVI, pp. 110-111 (original wax model and another cast illustrated). Anne Pingeot, Degas, Sculptures, Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris, 1991, no. 6, p. 155 (another cast illustrated as plates 72 and 73). Alice C. Frelinghuysen, et al., Splendid Legacy, The Havemeyer Collection, an exhibition catalogue, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1993, p. 80 (another cast illustrated). Sara Campbell, 'Degas: The Sculptures, a Catalogue Raisonné,' in Apollo, August 1995, vol. CXLII, no. 402, p. 18, no. 15 (another cast illustrated). Joseph S. Czestochowski and Anne Pingeot, Degas Sculptures: Catalogue Raisonné of the Bronzes, International Arts, Memphis; and Torch Press, New York, 2002, no. 15, p. 151 (another cast illustrated p. 150). Sara Campbell, Degas in the Norton Simon Museum, Yale University Press for the Norton Simon Art Foundation, New Haven, 2009, Vol. II, no. 67, pp. 354-357 (another cast illustrated p. 355, original wax version also illustrated p. 356). Suzanne G. Lindsay, Edgar Degas Sculpture, an exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2010, no. 31, pp. 205-208 (original wax version illustrated p. 206). NOTE: Although Edgar Degas is credited with the creation of hundreds of sculptures throughout his career, very little is known about the scope and chronology of his sculptural œuvre. In his lifetime, the artist only exhibited one sculpture in public, La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans, which was on view for less than a month at the sixth Impressionist Exhibition in 1881, thereafter kept hidden in Degas' private apartment until his death in 1917. Yet numerous friends such as Julie Manet and Walter Sickert recalled seeing several wax models scattered around the artist's studio. Even his dealer, Joseph Durand-Ruel wrote in 1919: "As far as I can remember-that is to say, perhaps forty years-whenever I called on Degas I was almost as sure to find him modelling in clay as painting." (Letter from Joseph Durand-Ruel to Royal Cortissoz, dated June 7, 1919. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection, Yale University). To this day, Degas' motivations for producing such a body of work still remain unclear. While some scholars have analyzed his statuettes as a late, desperate attempt to show creativity and improvisation at a time when he was becoming blind, others see them as mere exercises in form, a substitute for the living models Degas used in his pastel and oils of similar subject matter. Either way, the fact that so many of his sculptures remained unknown for so many years suggests a private project, which the artist intended to keep for himself. To all who knew him personally, Degas was admittedly reluctant to have his sc