Little Dancer of Fourteen Years
The "Little Dancer" wax sculpture we see today is a reworked version of the original sculpture that was shown in 1881. After seeing the wax sculpture in Degas’ living quarters in April 1903, the New York collector Louisine Havemeyer expressed interest in buying the wax. After proposing a bronze or cast wax of the sculpture, which Mrs. Havemeyer refused, Degas took his wax figure upstairs to his working studio and told Vollard he was reworking the sculpture for Havemeyer for 40,000 francs. Degas never sold the sculpture to Mrs. Havemeyer. After Degas died, it was found in a corner of his studio. Paul Lefond, Degas’ biographer, described the "Little Dancer" wax after Degas’ death as "nothing but a ruin;" and Mary Cassatt telegraphed Mrs. Havemeyer "Statue Bad Condition." However, the wax sculpture we know today is not a ruin. It is Degas' reworked second version of his wax figure. At some point before Degas extensively reworked his sculpture, he allowed a plaster to be cast from the wax figure. This recently re-discovered plaster records the "Little Dancer"’s original pose, bodice, and hairdo. The plaster is now in a private collection in the United States.
After the Bath, Woman Drying Herself
Nine of Degas' pastel drawings of women at their bath were exhibited by Theo Van Gogh at Galerie Boussod et Valadon in 1888. The work was shown at the Lefevre Gallery in 1950 and was bought for the collection of the National Gallery, London in 1959. A less highly worked example of a similar subject is in the Courtauld Gallery, and other works in the series are in many public museums.
The work had a considerable influence on Francis Bacon, most noticeably on his triptychs "Three Figures in a Room" (1964, Centre Pompidou, Paris) and "Three Studies of the Male Back" (1970, Kunsthaus Zürich). The Tate Gallery says "For Bacon [it] was indeed something of a talisman. It epitomised Degas's approach to a larger obsession the two artists shared with the plasticity of the body, its potential for the most varied forms of articulation, in movement and repose." The work was one of three central nudes chosen by Bacon in his "The Artist's Choice" exhibition at the National Gallery in 1985, shown between Velázquez's "Rokeby Venus" and Michelangelo's "Entombment". Art historian and curator Michael Peppiatt quoted Bacon thus: "I love Degas. I think his pastels are among the greatest things ever made. I think they're far greater than his paintings."