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.
The Dance Class (Degas, Metropolitan Museum of Art)
The painting and its companion work in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris are amongst the most ambitious works by Degas on the theme of ballet. The imaginary scene depicts a dance class being held under the supervision of Jules Perrot, a famous ballet master, in the old Paris Opera, which had actually burnt down the previous year.
The poster on the wall for Rossini’s Guillaume Tell is a tribute to the operatic singer Jean-Baptiste Faure, who had commissioned the work.