Edgar Hilaire Germain Degas
French, 1834 - 1917Écolière (Little School Girl), 1910
Not on view
Bronze
Dimensions10 1/2 × 4 3/4 × 5 7/8 in. (26.7 × 12.1 × 14.9 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William L. Richards, 1961.6
This bronze sculpture by Edgar Degas depicts an écolière (French for schoolgirl), holding a book bag in her right hand and clasping her long braided hair in her left hand. Known for his depictions of modern life and society, Degas most often found inspiration in the women of nineteenth-century Paris. Though his paintings were regularly seen at Impressionist exhibitions during the 1870s and 1880s, he only exhibited one sculpture during his lifetime (a piece titled Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer).
This work was created late in his career, when he turned to modeling some of his favorite subjects in wax. Some scholars believe that this work could be a portrait of a girl in the Degas family, based an 1881 drawing in one of the artist's sketchbooks. The wax models were eventually cast in bronze.
