Head Resting on One Hand, Bust (Degas, avant 1885[1])

Edgar Degas

Head Resting on One Hand, Bust avant 1885[1]

Bronze proof, 62/K
Lost wax cast by A.A. Hébrard, between 1921 and 1932[2]
Inscription on the right shoulder: Degas (stamp)
Inscriptions on the left shoulder: 62/K – CIRE / PERDUE / A.A. HÉBRARD
Label on the inside of the sculpture, barely legible: DOUANES / PARIS / EXPOSITIONS
H. 12.3, W. 17.5, D. 16.2 cm

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Provenance

  • Glasgow, Cargill collection
  • France, private collection (by inheritance)

Selective Bibliography

  • 1921 Thiébault-Sisson, “Degas sculpteur raconté par lui-même ("Degas, Sculptor, Told in his Own Words"), Le Temps, May 23, 1921.
  • 1923 Exhibition of the Works in Sculpture of Edgar Degas, February to March, 1923, London, The Leicester Galleries, preface by Walter Sickert, n°71.
  • 1944 Rewald, John, Degas, Works in Sculpture, a Complete Catalogue, Pantheon Books Inc., New York, 1944, p.82, pl. XXIX, repr.
  • 1991 Pingeot, Anne and Horvat, Frank, Degas, Sculptures, RMN, 1991, p.187, n°71 et p.145, repr. (proof 62/P)
  • 1993 Fowle, Frances, Alexander Reid in Context: Collecting and Dealing in Scotland in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries, thesis, 1993, University of Edinburgh.
  • 2002 Czestochowski, Joseph S., Pingeot, Anne, Degas, sculptures, catalogue raisonné of the bronze, National Museum of San Carlos, Mexico City, June 10-September 15, 2002; Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, New York, October 10, 2002-January 12, 2003; San Diego Museum of Art, June 28-September 28, 2003, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, The Legion of Honor, October 18, 2003-January 18, 2004, p.242-243, n°62, repr.
  • 2010 Lindsay, Suzanne Glover, Barbour, Daphne S., Sturman, Shelley G., Edgar Degas Sculpture, The Collections of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, National Gallery of Art Publishing Office, 2010, p.350, n°63, repr. (original plaster).
  • 2011 Degas sculpteur, catalogue d’exposition, Roubaix, La Piscine – musée d’art et d’industrie André Diligent, October 8 – January 16, 2011, Paris, Gallimard, 2010, p.98, n°8, repr. (proof 62/P).
  • 2013 Marmor, Michael F., "Simulating Degas’ Vision: Implications for Dating his Sculpture,” rubrique Pointings, Sculpture Journal, n°22.2, 2013, p.96-108.
  • 2020 En Passant, Impressionism in sculpture, edited by Alexander Eiling and Eva Mongi-Vollmer, Francfort-sur-le-Main, Städel Museum, March 19 – June 28, 2020, Prestel, p.155, repr. Cat.69, (proof from the Museum de Fundatie Zwolle and Heino/Wijhe 62/F).

Selected Expositions

  • 1921, Exposition des sculptures de Degas, Paris, Galerie A.A. Hébrard, May – June, n°71.
  • 1922, Degas. Prints, Drawings, and Bronzes, New York, Grolier Club, January 26 – February 28 (series A of the bronzes).
  • 1922, Exposition Degas, New York, Galerie Durand-Ruel, 6-27 December (series B of the bronzes).
  • 1923, Exhibition of the Works in Sculpture of Edgar Degas, February – March, 1923, London, The Leicester Galleries, n°71.
  • 1924, Exposition Degas, April 12 – May 2, 1924, Paris, galerie Georges Petit, n°324.
 
"We will not get to the truth other than through the aide of modeling because it constrains the artist and forces him to leave out nothing that might possibly count." Edgar Degas, 1897[3]
 

Degas and Sculpture: Context

Degas began modeling in the middle of the 1860s. Later, in the 1880s, when his eyesight began to fail, he felt even more strongly the need to translate form into three dimensions. In his quest for realism and truth, sculpture became necessary to him: "The nose on my model, I scrutinize it, I note one by one all its aspects in a series of sketches and then bring it all together in a compact piece that is solidly anchored and does not lie." Though his sculptures explore the same subjects and attitudes as his paintings, they are not studies. Rather, he considered his sculpted figures as exercises "to give my paintings and my drawings more expression, more ardor, and more life." Degas' sculptures, like his drawings, display his artistic language in its freest expression.
 
Not intended for public view, his sculptures peopled his studio and, for him, constituted a repertoire of forms as well as additional support for his creativity. Only the Little Dancer Aged Fourteen was shown to the public during his lifetime. Never cast in bronze while he was alive, his numerous sculptures were discovered after his death in their original wax, plaster, or other material by the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who was given the task of making an inventory of his studio. Durand-Ruel found 150 sculpted works, some of them in bad condition. Of that number, 73 were chosen to be "saved." Paul-Albert Bartholomé, a sculptor and a friend of Degas, was put in charge of overseeing the future of the sculptures. He turned to the founder Adrien-Aurélien Hébrard[4] and his technician Albino Palazzolo and asked them to edition the works. Twenty-two proofs of each model (marked A to T + HER et HER.D)[5] were cast using the lost wax process beginning in the early 1920s and continuing until 1932,[6] with the exception of # 73, the Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, which was done a bit later. Once at least one proof of every sculpture had been cast, an exhibition of the 72 sculptures (with the Little Dancer Aged Fourteen in wax) was organized by the Hébrard gallery under the direction of Paul Vitry, offering the public its first chance to see the works. They were numbered and divided into four groups, based on their subject matter:
            * Studies of the movements and gestures of dancers, #s 1-37
            * Horses, #s 38-54
            * Studies of women, #s 55-68
            * Various others, #s 69-72
Head Resting on One Hand, Bust was grouped among the "Various others" and was number 71. Degas did very few sculpted portraits; only three are known today because they were editioned, but we know that others existed of which, sadly, no traces remain.

 

Degas and the Sculpted Portrait

On the other hand, Degas was deeply engaged with the portrait as a genre in his paintings—he did countless portraits between 1855 and 1870, first of people close to him, then commissioned works. Psychologically perceptive and free and original in style, his portraits and self-portraits have earned him a reputation as one of the greatest portraitists in the history of modern art. However, he rarely sculpted portraits, and instead used the medium mostly as a way to explore motion.
 
The three known sculpted portraits are:
* Head, Study for the Portrait of Madame S. previously known as First Study (Mathilde Salle)
* Head, Study for the Portrait of Madame S. previously known as Second Study (Mathilde Salle)[7]
* and our Head Resting on One Hand, Bust, which is, as indicated in the title, a bust.
 
While "( … ) Degas must have sculpted portraits of many friends"[8] and while no trace of these works remain, there is information available on two of them. One is the portrait of his friend, the Venetian painter Zandomeneghi, which Renoir found "extraordinary" and said he was sorry that Degas hid it away with the excuse that it was unfinished.[9]  The other is a bust of the young Hortense Valpinçon, which Degas himself mentioned to several friends in letters[10] during the autumn of 1884. While staying with the Valpinçons at Ménil-Hubert in Normandy, Degas did the portrait at the request of the girl's mother. For this second work, it is clear that Degas began with the head, then did the bust, and finally decided to do a life-d piece down to the mid-thigh. In a letter to Bartholomé on October 3, Degas described his bust, which had "two arms ( … ) one of which is behind her back, ( … ) the one whose hand is visible," and he adds a small sketch of the bust. This information[11] adds to the understanding of our bust in more than one way. On the one hand, it shows that he took a real pleasure in modeling and experimenting, though it was long and exacting work for him and various accidents occurred that contributed to the model's collapse before a mold could be made at the time. On the other hand, it also makes it clear that the artist at times began a composition, then changed his plans in the middle of its execution, leading to a new and different composition. Furthermore, it gives us another example of his focusing on modeling a single hand, as in our sculpture.
 
The composition of Head Resting on One Hand, Bust is quite unusual. It seems to be a fragment of a larger work that would have shown the body of a woman lying on her side. Anne Pingeot, in her catalogue of Degas' sculptures assembled in 1991, puts the work in a chapter titled "Fragment." The head tilted toward the side and the clean, horizontal cut just below the shoulders, where the hand emerges, creates a strange, oblique and triangular composition, out of balance to the right. The hand, which was clearly modeled separately, was later added to the pre-existing head.
 

An Incremental Composition

Thanks to a detailed scientific study of the original model undertaken by the conservationists at the National Gallery of Art in Washington,[12] we know that this sculpture was built up from separate pieces and that its construction was accomplished in several stages. Held in the collections of the National Gallery, the original model[13] is in plaster (various plasters) on a wooden base. It appears that the bust was likely molded from an earlier work, most certainly in terra cotta.[14] The artist then worked with fresh plaster in order to add the collar and other details. This makes it one of only four works that he cast in plaster during his lifetime.[15] Degas' other sculptures are in wax and were not duplicated.
 
The detailed technical study[16] also shows that the lace collar was modeled by hand and that the string around the thumb, under the chin, was made by dripping the plaster drop by drop and then shaping it with a tool. The lower edge of the bust, fine and fragile, seems to have been damaged and then reworked to repair it.
 
The hand and the head were joined together, adjusted for scale, and delicately fused with the addition of further material. This tells us a lot about Degas' creative process, which was always freely experimental. The scientific study of another head, Study for the Portrait of Madame Salle, First Study (#7), confirms this approach; it shows that the artist experimented with the angle of the head, adding a hand on the cheek at one stage of the work, which he later removed, eventually deciding to present the head upright.[17] Rodin used a similar method several years later, adding a hand to a face (Mask of Camille Claudel and Left Hand of Pierre de Wissant, c. 1895?) and a hand to a figure (The Hand of God or Creation, 1896?) but he used hands taken from other models and played with contrasting scales among the assembled elements. In the case of Head Resting on One Hand, Bust, the hand was clearly created to support this face. It is quickly modeled and the four fingers against the cheek are unusually long and fine. This languid hand recalls other hands that Degas created, such as Study of Hands for the Bellelli family, a painting held in the collections of the Musée d'Orsay.[18]
 

Identification of the Model

Though Degas' other sculpted portraits have been identified, we do not have information on the identity of the model for this work, though various suggestions have been made:
            * Millard[19] has suggested that the model was the opera singer Rose Caron,[20] whom Degas admired; however, this is unlikely, as photographs of Caron from the time show her with distinctly different features.
 
            * Other writers, from Rewald[21] in 1944 up to today, have suggested that it is the portrait of Périe de Fleury or Madame Bartholomé (1849-1887), the wife of the painter and sculptor Albert Bartholomé, a good friend of Degas. This identification is based on the fact that the piece was titled Madame Barthélémy when it was shown at the Grolier Club in New York in 1922. It is thought that it was simply a misspelling of Bartholomé. Degas might well have sculpted this dear friend, who had just died; she was still quite young in 1887. Writers who adhere to this idea have compared Degas' piece to the sculpture that Bartholomé did for the tomb of his beloved in the Bouillant Cemetery in Picardy. The sculpture can also be compared to Bartholomé's drawing of his wife lying down reading in 1883.[22] That work shows a face with fine features, the hair tied up in a similar chignon, and clothing with a high collar. But as far as we're concerned, the similarities stop there; the physiognomy is actually quite different. Like Anne Pingeot,[23] we find that the suggestion that this is Périe de Fleury ultimately unconvincing.
 
So, who could the model for this sculpture be? Here are our suggestions:
 
            * In looking carefully at the physiognomy of this portrait, we think first of all of the celebrated Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. Why should it not be a portrait of Marie Van Goethem (1865-1922?), the model for The Little Dancer? It's intriguing to compare the faces of the two sculptures, beginning with the eyes, half-closed and created by two asymmetric slits. The nose, too, is similar, long and thin, although different at the end—that on the Portrait tilts up in while The Little Dancer's is rounded. The cleft between the nose and the upper is slightly prominent in both sculptures, and they have the same high cheekbones. Only the chin is different, but that could be because the angle of the face is different—lowered on the Portrait and raised on The Little Dancer. Comparing the faces from a low-angle view reinforces their apparent similarity. Marie Van Goethem, the daughter of Belgian immigrants, came from a very poor family. Her mother, a washer-woman, sent her three daughters to the dance school at the Paris opera. Marie and her older sister Antoinette also worked as models. The family lived in the 9th arrondissement, very close to Degas' studio. Marie danced professionally for the opera from 1879 to 1882. She posed regularly for Degas and, in particular, from 1875 to 1880, she posed for his Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, which he first showed publicly in 1881 at the Impressionist Exhibition. But it's also possible that she modeled in much more intimate and casual poses, such as this one, that gave no indication that she was a dancer.[24]
 
            * In considering the identity of the model, it's also possible that it was the American painter Mary Cassatt (1844-1926). She was a close friend of Degas and had a studio not far from his; she greatly admired his pastels and collaborated with him in various ways. Attracted by the talented young American artist, Degas invited her to show in the 1879 Impressionist Exhibition and used her as a model. The two artists saw a lot of each other during the years 1879-1880 because they were working on an ongoing collaborative project (Le Jour et la Nuit or Day and Night). She posed for him several times, for instance for Portrait de Mary Cassatt,[25] Chez la modiste (At the Milliner's),[26] and Jeune femme nouant les rubans de son chapeau (Young Woman Tying the Ribbons on her Hat).[27]  Cassatt's very particular physiognomy, which is known both from various portraits of her and from photographs of her at the time, seems to us to be that of our Portrait—the slanted eyes, the slightly up-turned nose, the high cheekbones, and the large chin.
 
            * Finally, a painting titled Jeune femme la main devant la bouche (Young Woman, Her Hand Over Her Mouth)[28] shows an unidentified woman whose facial features seem quite similar to those of the young woman of our sculpture.
 
While the model for Head Resting on One Hand, Bust was certainly young, it is not possible to state her age exactly from the sculpture. Different writers have proposed different dates for the creation of the piece: Rewald suggests 1882-1885, Millard, around 1892, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, 1885-1888. But in light of a 2013 study on the state of the artist's eyes, it is quite likely that the work dates from the beginning of the 1880s at the latest, as the study shows that by 1885 Degas' vision was too blurred to be able to model a small face as delicately and precisely as this one.
 

Attitude and Intimacy

Though we would love to know the identity of the model, it is, in the long run, not a truly important  question because it was not a commissioned portrait, but a work of personal exploration on the artist's part. In general, in his sculptures, what interested him was attitude and atmosphere. He tried to capture a precise feeling through the depiction of a dancer's body or a woman in motion or a horse in action. "What I need most is to express nature in all of its character, movement in its fullest truth, accentuating muscle, bone, and the compact solidity of the flesh."[29] Though in this work, the model is presented in a motionless pose, Degas has nonetheless caught the precise attitude that he was seeking: a woman in solitude, perhaps simply resting, or perhaps reflecting in a moment of melancholy.
 
The gesture of a cheek resting on a hand recalls Dürer's well-known 1514 work Melancholy, which in turn, underscores the recurrence of this gesture throughout art history. Just citing Degas' contemporaries, we find Edvard Munch's Melancholy and Albert Bertrand's 1896 La buveuse d'absinthe au café de la Nouvelle Athènes (Woman Drinking Absinthe at the Café the Nouvelle Athènes). Degas himself depicted this state of the soul in his Melancholy from the late 1860s, which is now held in the Phillips Collection, though this work does not include the cheek resting in the hand. He also evoked this sentiment in the Femme au corsage vert (Woman in a Green Blouse) c. 1884, in which the model's right hand rests against her cheek, and her gaze is lost in the distance.
 
In Head Resting on One Hand, Bust, the model, with her distracted air, seems to be on the border between two different states: her half-closed eyes suggest only a vague attention to the concerns of the world while they also suggest her deeper attention to her inner life. We find ourselves witnessing a moment that is, in a way, doubly intimate. Degas had already explored this state, that of a mind both lost in reflection and closed in on itself, a state in which the subject effaces herself, abandoning all the conventions of social presentation and, instead, dives into herself. Examples include Repos d'une coryphée (Lead Dancer Resting) in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Danseuse accoudée (Dancer Leaning on her Elbows) in the National Museum of Belgium, La Convalescente (The Convalescent) in the J. Paul Getty Museum, and Femme assise à côté d'un vase de fleurs (Woman Sitting Next to a Vase of Flowers) in the Metropolitan Museum. An amateur photographer, Degas also explored this theme in that medium, as in his photo titled Louise Halévy étendue (Louise Halévy Reclining) held in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum.
 
Intimate scenes and scenes of domestic life were not at all uncommon in the works of many artists at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. Prominent examples would be Pierre Bonnard, with his Femme endormie (Sleeping Woman) and Édouard Vuillard's Madame Hessel en robe rouge lisant (Madame Hessel Reading in a Red Dress). Many examples of women depicted in intimate and relaxed postures can be found throughout the work of both of these artists, and of many others of the era.
 
There's something soft and gentle that emanates from Head Resting on One Hand, Bust, which is rooted in both the oblique composition and the intimacy of the pose, but it also comes from the fluidity of the modeling and the suppleness of its transitions. The face is finely worked, and yet the features are not overly defined. This treatment of the face strikes a pleasing contrast with that of the hair and the blouse; both are less defined and show traces of process, such as thumb prints and additions that are not completely integrated.[30] The sculpture is marked by Degas' signature modeling, which is precise, sensitive, and alive. The whole clearly shows his creative liberty subtly mingled with his thoughtful construction, incisive observation, and expertly expressive hand.
 

Other Proofs

The bronze edition of this model, like all of the Degas models, consists of 22 proofs (from A to T and HER and HERD) as well as two others, the MODELE, which is held in the collections of the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California and the Albino Palazzolo proof marked AP, the location of which is not known. The locations of fourteen other proofs are also not currently known (held in private collections) while six are held in museum collections: The Metropolitan Museum in New York (A); Hannema-De Stuers Fundation, Heino, the Netherlands (F); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (H); musée d'Orsay, Paris (P); Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen (R); and the Museu de Arte, Sao Paulo (S).

 

Distribution in England and the Cargill Collection

Our proof, marked K, comes from the Cargill Collection in Glasgow, Scotland. David William Cargill (1872-1939) was the director of the Burmah Oil company, which was founded by his father, Davis S. Cargill. He established one of the most important collections of Impressionist and modern art in Scotland. He worked principally with the dealer Alexander Reid (1854-1928) and his Glasgow gallery, La Société des Beaux Arts.[31]
 
Between 1918 and 1927, he bought works by Daumier, Boudin, Manet, Monet, and Degas, among others.[32] In 1923 in London and then again in 1924 in Glasgow, Reid worked with the Leicester Galleries of London to hold exhibitions of Degas' bronze sculptures, including 37 dancers, 17 horses, 14 studies of women, 3 bust portraits, and 1 bas-relief.[33] Head Resting on One Hand, Bust is listed as number 71 in the catalogue for that exhibition. D. W. T. Cargill could have bought it at this time[34] or on another occasion, but it was definitely acquired from the dealer Alexander Reid.[35] An old customs label is still on the inside of the sculpture. The sculpture later returned to France through an inheritance and was still in the family until quite recently.
[1] This date is based on comments made in a study of the condition of Degas' eyesight; see 2013, Marmor, p.100.
[2] Dates définies par Elisabeth Lebon pour la période de fonte des séries Degas par Hébrard in. Dictionnaire des fondeurs de bronze d’art, MaThese dates were established by Elisabeth Lebon as the period during which Hébrard cast a series of Degas' pieces. See Dictionnaire des fondeurs de bronze d’art, Marjon édition, 2003, p.186. The precise dates of the production of the Degas bronzes is not entirely clear. For further details, see Lindsay, Suzanne Glover, Barbour, Daphne S., Sturman, Shelley G, 2010, p.18, or Pingeot, 1991, p.31.
[3] Extract from Thiébault-Sisson's 1921 article.
[4] Hébrard signed a contract with Degas' beneficiaries on May 13, 1918.
[5] To this must be added both the MODELE series that Hébrard and Bartholomé decided to do and which was made public only in 1976 and the AP (artists' proofs) that the founder Albino Palazzolo held in reserve.
[6]  Cf. note 2.
[7] Numbers 7 and 27, respectively, in Czestochowski, Pingeot, 2002.
[8] Rewald, 1944, p. 8
[9] In A. Vollard, Renoir: An Intimate Record, New York, 1925.
[10] Letter to Ludovic Halévy/ letter to Henri Rouart / several letters to Bartholomé, including one from October 3, 1884, in Lettres de Degas, recueillies et annotées par M. Guérin et précédées d’une préface de D. Halévy (Degas' Letters, Collected and Annotated by M. Guérin and Preceded by a Preface by D. Halévy), Paris, 1931.
[11] See Rewald, 1944, p. 9.
[12] See Lindsay, Suzanne Glover, Barbour, Daphne S. Sturman, Shelley G, 2010, p. 350.
[13] Plaster on a wooden base, 12.4 x 18 x 16.3, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon Collection, held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, inv. 1999.79.40.
[14] The clay must have been grog or another very granular clay, as the plaster has a slightly irregular surface: in 2010, Lindsay, Barbour, Sturman, p. 350.
[15] The three other plasters found in his studio in 1918 were: Danse espagnole (deuxième étude) (Spanish Dance (second study)), #45; Danseuse regardant la plante de son pied droit, première étude (Dancer Studying the Position of her Right Foot, first study), #40, both cast around 1900, and Femme se frottant le dos avec une éponge, torse (Woman Scrubbing her Back with a Sponge, Torso), #28.
[16]  Op. cit.
[17]  See Lindsay, Suzanne Glover, Barbour, Daphne S., Sturman, Shelley G, 2010, p. 346.
[19]  Author of one of the first catalogues of Degas' sculpture: Millard, Charles, The Sculpture of Edgar Degas, Princeton University Press, 1976.
[20]  For the arguments in support of this suggestion, see 1991, Pingeot, p. 187, #71.
[21] Author of the first catalogue of Degas' sculptures in 1944.
[22] Albert Bartholomé, La femme de l'artiste (Périe, 1849-1887) lisant, (The Artist's Wife (Périe, 1849-1887) Reading), pastel and charcoal on paper, Metropolitan Museum of New York, (acc. num. 1990.117).
[23] Pingeot, 1991, p. 145.
[24] It was she who posed for the sculpted figure of L'Écolière (The Schoolgirl). See #74, Czestochowski, Pingeot. 2002.
[25] Mary Cassatt, c. 1880-1884, oil on canvas, National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C., inv.NPG.84.34.
[26] Chez la modiste (At the Miliner's), c. 1882, pastel on paper, MoMA, New York, inv.141.1957.
[27] Jeune femme nouant les rubans de son chapeau (Young Woman Tying the Ribbons on her Hat), c. 1882, pastel and charcoal on paper, musée d'Orsay, Paris, inv. RF5605.
[28] Jeune femme la main devant la bouche (Young Woman, Her Hand Over Her Mouth), c. 1875, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of New York, Inv. 2018.289.2. She has been identified as the model Emma Dobigny by the writer Pickvance in 1984, but Degas did not, himself, identify the model to the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel when the latter bought the painting in 1890, then titled Tête de femme, étude (Head of a Woman, Study).
[29] Extract from Thiébault-Sisson, article, 1921.
[30] Because of these formal characteristics and the intimate nature of the subject matter, the work has been included in a number of catalogues of Impressionist sculpture.
[31] In 1928, Alexander Reid joined forces with Earnest Lefevre to open the Lefevre Gallery in London.
[32] In 1922, D.W.T. Cargill bought Degas' Jockeys avant la course (Jockeys Before the Race), 1881, from Alexander Reid. In Fowle, thesis, 1993, p. 276.
[33] Catalogue of an Exhibition of the Works in Sculpture of Edgar Degas, with preface by Walter Sickert ("The Sculptor of Movement"), London, The Leicester Galleries, February-March, 1923, #71.
[34] We know that D.W.T. Cargill bought two bronze Degas sculptures of horses during this exhibition for 480 pounds, in Fowle, thesis, 1993, p.288. However, there is no mention of the purchase of Head Resting on One Hand, Bust.
[35] D.W.T. Cargill bought his entire collection of French art from Reid. In Fowle, thesis, 1993, p.310.