Art Institute of Chicago
Dancer Ready to Dance, Right Foot Forward
Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917)LinkedCulture matchlcp-bf4856169bdb
- Date
- Modeled 1882–95, cast 1919–21
- Medium
- Bronze
- Culture
- France
- Department
- Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Institution
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Object ID
- 68362
After Edgar Degas’s death in 1917, a large group of sculptures were discovered in his studio, most of them modeled in wax. With one exception, the works had never been exhibited during his lifetime and were virtually unknown to his contemporaries. Parisian foundry A. A. Hébrard eventually cast 74 of the figures into bronze, and three of the resulting sculptures in the collection of the Art Institute: Dancer Ready to Dance, Right Foot Forward , Arabesque , and Woman Arranging Her Hair . In Dancer Ready to Dance , the figure performs the tendu exercise, repeatedly extending and retracting her leg to strengthen certain muscles. Arabesque depicts the final movement of an arabesque penchée, in which the dancer gracefully tilts her body forward while extending one leg up and back. In the sculpture at far right, the woman is probably drying her hair after washing it in separate sections, as was common practice in the 19th century.
The authoritative record is held by Art Institute of Chicago. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.
Get printable QR codesHide QR codes
Open QR codes for this object page and the museum record. They stay collapsed until needed.
Provenance & credit
As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.
- Credit line
- Wirt D. Walker Endowment
- Provenance
- Commissioned by Edgar Degas’s heirs from the Hébrard Foundry, Paris, May 1918; René DeGas Family, Paris, by 1921 [see Czestochowski and Pingeot, pp. 15]; by descent to the DeGas-Musson Family, New Orleans, before 1950 [see source cited above, p. 233]; sold by Gaston DeGas-Musson and the Musson Family to the Elkin and Albris Silberman Galleries, New York, January 19, 1950 [see source cited above; see also agreement of sale, January 19, 1950, DeGas-Musson Family Papers, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, copy in curatorial file]; sold by Silberman Galleries to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1950.
Linked open data
Authority identifiers that link this record into the wider web of cultural data — stable references you can follow to the source.
- Object type
- AAT300301253
Related across collections
Semantically similar works from Art Institute of Chicago and other institutions.