Getty Museum

Dancer

Date

model 1909; cast 1912

Medium

Bronze

Culture

Italian

Department

Sculpture

Institution

Getty Museum

The apparently spontaneous gesture of the sitter, the famous Russian dancer and pianist Countess Thamara Swirskaya (Saint Petersburg, 1890–Los Angeles 1961), is enhanced by the rough surface and undefined contours of the bronze. The Countess posed for this lively composition in 1909 in Paris, where the Italian-born Troubetzkoy, the son of a Russian prince and an American mother, worked at the time. Internationally renowned, Troubetzkoy came to Los Angeles between 1918 and 1920 to create the monument to General Harrison Grey Otis that still stands in MacArthur Park. Much later, in 1944, Swirskaya also came to Los Angeles where she performed mostly as a pianist. She died there in 1961 of a car accident caused by a storm and is buried at Forest Lawn.

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