Edgar Degas
Degas's only showing of sculpture during his life took place in 1881 when he exhibited "The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years". A nearly life-size wax figure with real hair and dressed in a cloth tutu, it provoked a strong reaction from critics, most of whom found its realism extraordinary but denounced the dancer as ugly. In a review, J.-K. Huysmans wrote: "The terrible reality of this statuette evidently produces uneasiness in the spectators; all their notions about sculpture, about those cold inanimate whitenesses ... are here overturned. The fact is that with his first attempt Monsieur Degas has revolutionized the traditions of sculpture as he has long since shaken the conventions of painting."
Suzanne Manet
Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas met by chance at the Louvre in 1862, and after an intense conversation and Manet's demonstration on the art of etching, they became lifelong friends. Sometime in 1868 Degas painted a portrait of Manet and his wife. Manet is reclining on a couch and Suzanne appears to be seated at a piano. The mystery that surrounds the portrait by Degas is the fact that the painting has been slashed from top to bottom and right through the likeness of Suzanne. The supposition is that Manet, for an unknown reason, cut the painting. Manet might have slashed the painting because he did not like the way Suzanne was painted, or because he was feuding at the time with Degas, or he might have been angry with his wife. When Degas saw what had been done to his painting he demanded its return, and he took it back. Degas intended to re-paint the likeness of Suzanne at the piano and he reiterated his intention to Ambroise Vollard in conversation with him around the turn of the century. Degas never got around to fixing the painting and it remains in its slashed state in the Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art in Japan.