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TJ123-8-2009 LK VWD0011 Tradition Humanistic 6th Edition W:220mm x H:292mm 175L 115 Stora Enso M/A Magenta (V)Sculpture in the Late
Nineteenth Century128 CHAPTER 31 The Move Toward Modernism128
Degas and Rodin
The two leading European sculptors of the late nineteenth
century, Edgar Degas and Auguste Rodin (1840–1917),
were masters at capturing the physical vitality of the
human figure. Like the Impressionists, they were interested
in lifelike movement and the sensory effects of light. To
catch these fleeting qualities, they modeled their figures
rapidly in wet clay or wax. The bronze casts made from
these originals preserve the spontaneity of the additive
process. Indeed, many of Degas’ bronze sculptures, cast
posthumously, retain the imprints of his fingers and finger-
nails.Degas often executed sculptures as exercises preliminary
to his paintings. Throughout his life, but especially as his
vision began to decline, the artist turned to making three-
dimensional “sketches” of racehorses, bathers, and balleri-
nas—his favorite subjects. At his death, he left some 150
sculptures in his studio, some fully worked and others in
various stages of completion. Only one of these sculptures,
the Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, was exhibited as a finished
artwork during Degas’ lifetime. The reddish-brown wax
original, made eerily lifelike by the artist’s addition of a
tutu, stockings, bodice, ballet shoes, a green satin ribbon,
and hair from a horsehair wig (embedded strand by strand
into the figure’s head), was the subject of some controver-
sy in the Parisian art world of 1881 (a world that would
not see such mixed-media innovations for another half-
century). The bronze cast of Degas’ Dancer(Figure 31.19),
whose dark surfaces contrast sensuously with the fabric
additions, retains the supple grace of the artist’s finest
drawings and paintings.
Like Degas, Rodin was keenly interested in movement
and gesture. In hundreds of drawings, he recorded the
dancelike rhythms of studio models whom he bid to move
about freely rather than assume traditional, fixed poses
(Figure 31.20). But it was in the three-dimensional
media that Rodin made his greatest contribution. One of
his earliest sculptures, The Age of Bronze(Figure31.21),
was so lifelike that critics accused him of forging the
figure from plaster casts of a live model. In actuality,Figure 31.19 EDGAR DEGAS, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, ca. 1880–1881 (cast
ca. 1919–32). Bronze with net tutu and hair ribbon, 3 ft. 2^1 ⁄ 2 141 ⁄ 2 in. 141 ⁄ 4 in.
In Degas’ time, young female dancers, called “little rats,” usually came from
working-class families for whom they provided income.Figure 31.20 AUGUSTE RODIN, Dancing Figure, 1905.
Graphite with orange wash, 12^7 ⁄ 8 97 ⁄ 8 in.