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Recent scholars see Hébrard’s call for a new tutu in 1919 as a sign that it was provided. The dates given for possible changes, though, are often based on questionable information. The present skirting, described in the Technical Notes, is widely considered not the original, but the history of the tutu at any point is especially murky. The tutu’s length, density, and transparency are crucial to its appearance. Whatever Degas’s aim in eschewing the modest (and warm) baggy reality, the figure’s departure from historical fact and drawings related to the project simplifies the sculpture formally, seeming to clarify the anatomy and pose. The wrinkled impressions of leggings on the dancer suggest the corresponding silk tights for performance, not the heavy work stockings that stopped, gartered, above the knee in fact, the wax’s modeling and tooling to simulate tights continues to the top of the thigh. The “culottes” formed by the bottom layers described in the Technical Notes instead resemble de Mérode’s underskirting for performance. Visible in many of Degas’s paintings and in photographs of the period, such pantaloons are not documented for Degas’s Little Dancer at any point, and there are no imprints on the wax to suggest they were originally present. Yet this figure lacks the loose bloomers to the knees typically found under a nineteenth-century work tutu. The tutu, which most chroniclers only summarily describe as of “real” muslin, gauze, or tarlatan, and “cheap,” further suggests a working tutu that loosely corresponds to de Mérode’s description. Two critics correspondingly describe the figure’s outfit as work attire, with a bodice of modest cotton ticking (de Villars) in white (Huysmans). The pair on Little Dancer is half-prepared for use: it includes the ankle ribbons that dancers themselves add, but not their darning to reinforce the soft toe for pointe work. Comparison with nineteenth-century examples suggests that they are commercial products (perhaps a child’s, as mentioned in the Technical Notes above) modified at the heel to fit the wax. The linen slippers, pigmented pink by the wax, are most similar to work models, described in memoirs as of pink or gray cotton ticking (coutil ) rather than sheathed in dyed satin like a performance shoe. The statuette’s costume seems to combine apparel for performance and work in a way that departs from examples seen in period documents. If the wax originally bore these accessories, however, it was more elaborately adorned (like some dancers in Degas’s paintings) than ever thought, but simplified by the time it was photographed following Degas’s death. These are possible errors since there are no imprints of such elements on the dancer’s neck or waist (unlike the impression of a grosgrain ribbon visible in her hair, noted in the Technical Notes), and no such details in the inventory photographs, though several drawings represent a band at the waist (fig. Critics’ mention of a hair ribbon corresponds with the inventory photograph, but certain critics also record ribbons elsewhere on her body: Huysmans describes a matching companion at her neck, and Mantz, a blue ribbon around her waist. This figure’s dark blond Caucasian human hair indicates it is more “real” than Huysmans’s famous description of it as of horse hair.
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Little Dancer’s present color is a dark honey, with areas of dark overpaint, but the pink tint on her lips and ears, visible at close range, imparts the “living” effect of coursing blood to the translucent wax.
EDOUARD WORMSER SKIN
The vague descriptions of the figure’s skin suggest she was not fair: Mantz claims her unwashed appearance went far beyond the shiny pink freshness of a window mannequin even for natural-ist accuracy. Some call the wax lifelike, despite its small size, especially in its modeling, materials, and color. For example, though the catalogue defines the figure as a wax statuette, Bertall labels it a terra-cotta. Typical of Salon criticism, descriptions of Little Dancer in 1881 vary from one another and from other period documents, presenting a problem in using them as evidence. Thus we begin with the textual evidence and a historical analysis of individual elements, some as revealed by Sturman and Barbour in the Technical Notes above. No images of the wax from Degas’s lifetime, even caricatures, have been found, so scholars have long relied on critical reviews, related drawings, and the inventory photographs taken forty years after its exhibition. Despite its fame, Little Dancer’s original appearance is inadequately documented.