Edgar Degas’s Arabesque is among the most dynamic of the artist’s sculptural studies of the ballet. Degas conceived and modelled the work in wax between approximately 1882 and 1895; the bronze versions, including the present example, were cast posthumously by the Hébrard foundry following the artist’s death in 1917. The sculpture captures a dancer practising the leaning arabesque, one of ballet’s most demanding positions. Balanced upon a single leg, her body pitches forward while the other leg extends dramatically behind her, the opposing arm reaching outwards to provide a counterweight. The apparent effortlessness of the pose belies the considerable strength, discipline and control required to sustain it.

Few subjects are more closely associated with Degas than the ballet. From the 1870s onwards, dancers occupied an increasingly important place within his work, ultimately accounting for more than half of his artistic production. Yet Degas’s interest extended far beyond the spectacle of the performance itself. He was equally fascinated by the world behind the stage: the rehearsal rooms, exercises, moments of exhaustion and repetition through which the illusion of effortless movement was painstakingly constructed.

It was this private, disciplined world that provided Degas with some of his most compelling subjects. Rather than presenting the ballerina solely as an embodiment of elegance and grace, he examined the physical mechanics underlying her art. Dancers stretch, bend, practise and rest; they adjust their shoes, massage tired limbs and repeat the same movements again and again. Ballet offered Degas an inexhaustible vocabulary of bodily positions through which he could investigate balance, weight, tension and movement.

Arabesque represents the culmination of a sequence of three sculptures in which Degas explored successive stages of the same movement. In the premier temps, the dancer remains comparatively upright; in the second phase, she begins to incline forward while balancing upon one leg; in the third phase, the movement reaches its fullest and most precarious extension. The titles do not correspond to an established sequence within the official ballet repertoire but instead describe a progression devised by Degas himself. By separating the movement into three distinct moments, he effectively dissects the arabesque, examining the mechanics of the dancer’s body as it passes from stability towards extreme extension.

The present sculpture is the most dramatic of the three. The dancer’s torso projects forward as her raised leg extends backwards and upwards, while the opposing arm reaches out to maintain equilibrium. The composition depends upon a finely judged system of counterbalances: every movement in one direction is answered by another elsewhere in the body. In the posthumous bronze, this sense of precarious movement assumes a particular force. The permanence and physical weight of the material stand in striking contrast to the fleeting instant Degas sought to capture.

This tension between movement and stillness lies at the heart of Degas’s sculpture. The dancer is necessarily fixed in a single position, yet everything about her body implies continuation. The viewer instinctively imagines the movement immediately preceding the pose and anticipates what will follow it; the sculpture therefore transforms a static object into an investigation of movement itself.

Degas’s fascination with the ballet developed across painting, pastel, drawing, photography and sculpture. Each medium allowed him to investigate a different aspect of the dancer’s body. In his celebrated pastels, vigorous strokes and intense colour communicate the fleeting atmosphere of performance: tutus dissolve into passages of pigment while bodies emerge and disappear amid the activity of the stage or rehearsal room. Sculpture offered something fundamentally different. Freed from the surrounding theatre, the dancer could be studied entirely in terms of volume, weight and spatial relationships.

Degas remarked that “drawing is… a way of seeing form,” and sculpture allowed this investigation to become fully three-dimensional - the dancer is no longer simply represented within space; her body actively defines it. The extended limbs project in opposing directions, creating an invisible structure around the figure and compelling the viewer to experience the sculpture from multiple viewpoints.

Degas increasingly turned to modelling in wax and clay during the 1880s. Working directly with malleable materials allowed him to investigate the body through touch as well as sight, continually adjusting and reworking its proportions and balance. These sculptures were essentially private working objects rather than bronzes intended for exhibition or sale. With the celebrated exception of The Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, which he exhibited in wax in 1881, Degas did not publicly exhibit his sculpture during his lifetime.

The physicality of this modelling process is particularly appropriate to the subject of the dancer. Just as the ballerina achieves her pose through repetition, discipline and muscular effort, Degas constructed his figure through the repeated manipulation of material. The sculpture consequently establishes a subtle correspondence between the labour of the dancer and that of the artist. Both depend upon the transformation of physical effort into an appearance of spontaneity.

In this respect, Degas occupied a distinctive position among the artists associated with Impressionism. While sharing their commitment to modern life and direct observation, he remained deeply concerned with draughtsmanship, structure and the representation of the human figure. His dancers are unmistakably modern subjects, but his investigation of the body also reflects a longstanding engagement with the traditions of European figure study.

Following Degas’s death in 1917, more than 150 sculptural models were discovered in his studio, many executed in wax and already in a fragile condition. His heirs subsequently authorised the Parisian founder Adrien-Aurélien Hébrard to reproduce a selected group of seventy-three models in bronze. Arabesque, third phase was among the works chosen for this project.