The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer

Critics and observers were appalled when the original, wax version of this now beloved figure was presented in a tutu, ballet slippers, and a wig of human hair at the 1881 Impressionist exhibition in Paris. The pubescent dancer’s jaunty, almost defiant pose and real clothing made her uncomfortably lifelike, while the appearance of her warm flesh connected her with specimens in waxwork and natural history museums. The French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans wrote at the time, "The terrible realism of this statuette makes the public distinctly uneasy, all its ideas about sculpture, about cold lifeless whiteness . . . are demolished."