Little Dancer of Fourteen Years
The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (French: "La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans") is a sculpture begun c. 1880 by Edgar Degas of a young student of the Paris Opera Ballet dance school, a Belgian named Marie van Goethem.
Désiré Dihau
He is best known for being the bassoonist of the Paris Opera, where he played from July 1, 1862 to December 31, 1889, immortalized by Edgar Degas in the 1870 painting, ', preceded by a sketch kept at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Degas also depicted him in other paintings in which were present the musicians of the Salle Le Peletier, ' in 1872 and both versions, of 1871 and 1876, of the ballet of "Robert le Diable". Degas probably met Dihau at the Mère Lefebvre, in Montmartre where artists and musicians gathered. It is Dihau who introduced Degas to the opera where the painter found his strongest inspiration in the spectacle of the dancers he so often painted.