Marie van Goethem
Between 1878 and 1881, Degas drew, painted and sculpted Marie in artworks including "Dancer with Fan", "Dancing Lesson", "Dancer Resting", numerous preparatory sketches, and most famously in "Little Dancer of Fourteen Years". He frequently attended ballet performances at the Paris Opera and often observed classes at the dance school. By posing for Degas, Marie likely earned five to six francs per four-hour sitting.
Edgar Degas
Upon his return to France in 1859, Degas moved into a Paris studio large enough to permit him to begin painting "The Bellelli Family"—an imposing canvas he intended for exhibition in the Salon, although it remained unfinished until 1867. He also began work on several history paintings: "Alexander and Bucephalus" and "The Daughter of Jephthah" in 1859–60; "Sémiramis Building Babylon" in 1860; and "Young Spartans" around 1860. In 1861 Degas visited his childhood friend Paul Valpinçon in Normandy, and made the earliest of his many studies of horses. He exhibited at the Salon for the first time in 1865, when the jury accepted his painting "Scene of War in the Middle Ages", which attracted little attention. Although he exhibited annually in the Salon during the next five years, he submitted no more history paintings, and his "Steeplechase—The Fallen Jockey" (Salon of 1866) signaled his growing commitment to contemporary subject matter. The change in his art was influenced primarily by the example of Édouard Manet, whom Degas had met in 1864 (while both were copying the same Velázquez portrait in the Louvre, according to a story that may be apocryphal).