The NY Times is reporting that Arthur Beale now believes the plaster of a possible Degas Little Dancer is a lifetime work by Degas. Beale thinks there is strong evidence to support the attribution and urges other scholars to look again.
The NY Times reports
In a twist to a longstanding debate that for years has riveted a corner of the art world, one of the leading experts on Degas has decided that a long-disputed plaster of that artist’s “Little Dancer,” which shows the ballerina in a slightly different pose, is indeed an earlier model of his famous 1881 sculpture “Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans.”
Arthur Beale, the retired chairman of the department of conservation and collections management at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, says he now believes the controversial theory put forward by another art historian, Gregory Hedberg, that the plaster, only discovered in 2004, was created during Degas’s lifetime.
What makes Mr. Beale’s endorsement of Mr. Hedberg’s theory so surprising is that Mr. Beale was once part of a group of other distinguished art historians, among them Gary Tinterow, now the director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, who have long argued against Mr. Hedberg’s view of the plaster, which was found in a closet of a foundry, now defunct, outside Paris. Mr. Hedberg has asserted that it is the work of Degas, or of his studio, and was created before the artist’s death in 1917.
Choosing his words carefully, Mr. Tinterow said of the plaster in 2010, “In my opinion, there is nothing that demonstrates that Degas had a set of plaster casts made of his sculptures during his lifetime.” The Degas experts generally believe that the plaster is a copy — albeit one with many distinct differences in pose, posture and expression from the actual “Little Dancer.”
Now Mr. Beale has parted ways with his fellow experts. “I think those that have scoffed at it as being a fake or a copy or something, should take a second look,” he said on Friday in an interview. “That there’s a good deal of evidence, of all natures — art, historical, technical, scientific and so forth — that make this a rather significant, seemingly significant piece.”
This week, through Saturday, the plaster, with an attribution to Degas, is being exhibited in Manhattan at the French Institute Alliance Française, on East 60th Street. The exhibition coincides with the publication of a book on Degas by Mr. Hedberg, an art historian who began his career at the Frick Collection in New York, and later became curator of paintings at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and chief curator of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford.
After spending nearly 20 years as an art dealer at the Hirschl & Adler Gallery in New York, he is a senior consultant to the gallery.
Mr. Hedberg’s theory about the plaster is described in detail in his book, “Degas’ Little Dancer Aged Fourteen.” In its introduction, Mr. Hedberg writes that the plaster “records an earlier conception” of the “Little Dancer” and therefore is “poised to be a significant and consequential addition” to what Mr. Hedberg believes is still being discovered about Degas’s sculptural work.
Mr. Hedberg writes that the plaster, “quietly stored away” at the defunct Valsuani foundry in France, “was initially thought to have been cast” after Degas’s death from the original “Little Dancer,” a 49-pound wax sculpture, made from a combination of yellow beeswax, clay, silk and other cloth. The banker Paul Mellon bought that sculpture in 1956 and later donated it to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, where it still resides.
“But,” Mr. Hedberg writes, “in fact, the plaster was cast from the original wax, before Degas reworked it beginning in 1903. Thanks to this plaster, we can now better understand why Degas’s ‘Little Dancer’ set off a firestorm in the Parisian art world in 1881.”
Mr. Hedberg says in his book that he went to Paris in September 2004 with the investment banker Lloyd Greif and Mr. Greif’s wife, Renée, who fell in love with a bronze of the “Little Dancer” that Valsuani had cast from the newly discovered plaster. The Greifs bought the bronze and then, a few months later, told Mr. Hedberg that they also wanted the plaster. In 2005, Mr. Hedberg and Hirschl & Adler arranged the sale of the plaster to the Greifs for around $400,000, with the stipulation by the owner of the defunct foundry that the plaster could never be resold, although it could be donated to a museum.
A bronze sculpture cast in 1922 from the widely embraced wax “Little Dancer” in the National Gallery sold at auction in June 2015 at Sotheby’s for $24.9 million. Bronze sculptures based on the Greifs’ plaster, and cast at Valsuani before it went bankrupt this year, have generally fetched around $2 million. Another 73 plasters, which Mr. Hedberg also attributes to Degas, were found at Valsuani; when still operative, the foundry cast 27 sets of bronzes from them.
On Wednesday, Mr. Beale will deliver a lecture at the Alliance Française titled “How Understanding Sculptural Techniques Can Lead to Important Art Historical Discoveries.” He said that his lecture would be “tangential” to Mr. Hedberg’s theory, but that his thinking had been informed by it. Mr. Beale is also working on a documentary film about the plaster and its controversy, which he said had reached “a turning point” with the publication of Mr. Hedberg’s book.
“If he’s proved nothing else,” Mr. Beale said, Mr. Hedberg has shown that “‘Little Dancer’ went through quite an evolution of changes. That can be seen inside and out. It can be seen through the X-rays, it can be seen through physical evidence and through all the written documentation, letters and exchange of letters and observations of others living at the time.” Mr. Beale said that he had no financial stake in the outcome of the debate or the bronzes once made at Valsuani.
In his book, Mr. Hedberg thanks Mr. Beale especially and writes that he was “the first Degas scholar to take the Degas plasters found at Valsuani seriously.”
Source: The NY Times
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