Little Dancer Aged Fourteen: The True Story Behind Degas's Masterpiece

Product Description

She is famous throughout the world, but how many know her name? You can admire her figure in Washington, Paris, London, New York, Dresden, or Copenhagen, but where is she buried? We know only her age, fourteen, and the work that she did, already grueling work, at an age when children today are in school. In the 1880s, she danced as a little rat at the Paris Opera, and what is often a dream for young girls now wasn't a dream for her. She was fired after several years of hard work; the director had had enough of her repeated absences. She had been working another job, even two, because the few pennies the Opera paid weren't enough to keep her and her family fed. She was a model, posing for painters or sculptors--among them Edgar Degas.

Drawing on a wealth of historical material as well as her own love of ballet and personal experience of loss, Camille Laurens presents a compelling, compassionate portrait of Marie van Goethem and the world of the artists' models themselves, traditionally overlooked in the history of art.She is famous throughout the world, but how many know her name? You can admire her figure in Washington, Paris, London, New York, Dresden, or Copenhagen, but where is she buried? We know only her age, fourteen, and the work that she did, already grueling work, at an age when children today are in school. In the 1880s, she danced as a little rat at the Paris Opera, and what is often a dream for young girls now wasn't a dream for her. She was fired after several years of hard work; the director had had enough of her repeated absences. She had been working another job, even two, because the few pennies the Opera paid weren't enough to keep her and her family fed. She was a model, posing for painters or sculptors--among them Edgar Degas.

Drawing on a wealth of historical material as well as her own love of ballet and personal experience of loss, Camille Laurens presents a compelling, compassionate portrait of Marie van Goethem and the world of the artists' models themselves, traditionally overlooked in the history of art.
Camille Laurens is an award-winning French novelist and essayist. She received the Prix Femina, one of France's most prestigious literary prizes, in 2000 for Dans ces bras-lO, which was published in the United States as In His Arms in 2004. Her second novel to appear in English, Who You Think I Am (Other Press, 2017), is the basis for a forthcoming film starring Juliette Binoche. Laurens lives in Paris.

Willard Wood is the winner of the 2002 Lewis Galantiore Award for Literary Translation and a 2000 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Translation. He lives in Connecticut.