The True Story of the Little Ballerina Who Influenced Degas' Little Dancer

Edgar Degas created a sensation when he presented his Little Dancer sculpture at the Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1881. His intention was to portray a young girl who dreamed of having an “illustrious life” in ballet, but who also kept “her identity as a girl from the streets of Paris.”
 It turned out that Degas’ model was a street urchin, one of the “opera rats” who joined the Paris Opera Ballet as a way out of poverty. Her name was Marie Geneviève van Goethem and her mother worked as a laundress; her older sister was a prostitute, and her younger sister would also become a dancer at the Opera. Sculpted by Degas between 1878 and 1881, the work is often referred to as the most famous ballerina in the world. The artist was a frequent backstage presence, painting and sketching the dancers as they rehearsed or stood in the wings waiting to perform. He sculpted Marie when she was 11, rendering her in pigmented beeswax and nondrying modeling clay at age 14. continue