Retiring Degas' Dancers

I had written an earlier post illustrated with a page of charcoal sketches of Degas’ small bronze sculptures of dancers. While rooting through my notebooks, I came across three more pages of these. The one I pictured above was originally a small page with a sketch of a dancer grasping her shoe. When I was first using these sketches for paintings she made her way into a strange little painting on wood of an early automobile called the Invicta. I called this oil on wood painting “Catch Invicta” and sold it through the HOFP gallery in Columbia back in the early 1990's. Unfortunately I don’t have an image of this painting so can’t show it here.  But should anyone reading this happen to know where the oil on wood painting "Catch Invicta" is, do let me know and I'll add it to my growing archive.  This archive is now at the National Museum of Women in the Arts so you, too, can be a footnote in history.

Now that I am retiring these drawings of Dega’s dancers, I finished up the dancer grasping her shoe with charcoals and pastels. To add some bulk to the composition I added an image of a dancer from another page. That dancer was featured on one of my painted boxes. I also don’t have an image of the side of the box that features her but will show another angle and another dancer later.