Degas's sculpture of Marie van Goethem depicts the sinewy and athletic teenager - a dancer at the paris opera who supplemented her modest income by modeling for Dega - at rest with her chin and chest thrust forward. Her pose seems at odds with the elegance we usually associate with ballet.
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This figure, first modeled in colored wax, was the only sculpture Degas showed during his lifetime, and it caused a scandal when exhibited in 1881. Critics perceived the piece as vulgar and denounced the way it was displayed in a glass case, as if the ballerina were an artifact in a science museum.
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