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Little Dancer of Fourteen Years Little Dancer of Fourteen Years is a c. 1881 sculpture by Edgar Degas of a young student of the Paris Opera Ballet dance school named Marie van Goethem. The sculpture is two-thirds life size and was originally sculpted in wax, an unusual choice of medium for the time. It is dressed in a real bodice, tutu and ballet slippers and has a wig of real hair. All but a hair ribbon and the tutu are covered in wax. The 28 bronze repetitions that appear in museums and galleries around the world today were cast after Degass death. The tutus worn by the bronzes vary from museum to museum. The exact relationship between Marie van Goethem and Edgar Degas is a matter of debate. It was usual in 1880 for the Petits Rats of the Paris Opera to seek protectors from among the wealthy visitors at the back door of the opera. When the La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans was shown in Paris at the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition of 1881, it received mixed reviews. The majority of critics were shocked by the piece. They compared the dancer to a monkey and an Aztec and referred to her as a flower of precocious depravity, with a face marked by the hateful promise of every vice and bearing the signs of a profoundly heinous character. She looked like a medical specimen, they reported, in part because Degas exhibited the sculpture inside a glass case. After Degass death, his heirs made the decision to have the bronze repetitions of Le Petite Danseuse and other wax and mixed-media sculptures cast. The casting took place at the Hbrard foundry in Paris from 1920 until the mid-20th century. Sixty-nine of Degass wax sculptures survived the casting process. One copy of Le Petite Danseuse is currently owned by the creator and owner of Auto Trader, John Madejski. He stated that he bought the sculpture by accident. That copy was sold for 13,257,250at Sothebys on February, 3rd 2009. Another casting failed to sell at a November 2011 auction at Christies. | 
