Degas in Wax

"I must learn a blind man's trade," French Impressionist Edgar Degas said sadly toward the end of his life. Faced with rapidly failing eyesight, he turned increasingly to sculpture in wax as the one remaining form left for him in his life in the twilight. Last week 69 of Degas' original wax statues, preserved over the years by a French foundry and only recently come to light, were for the first time on display at Manhattan's Knoedler Gallery.

Encased in the wax forms is the same magic world of ballet dancers, women bathing and race track studies of jockeys and thoroughbreds that Degas made famous with his paintings. But the studies are far from being ancient relics from th past. The wax figurines by their very defects--the mark of being studio studies their unfinished surfaces, even the thumb prints left by Degas' nervous, racing hands as he worked--gain a sense of startling immediacy.

Degas never meant his wax studies to be seen. He doubted his own results wrote a friend at the time: "I never seem to achieve anything with my blasted sculpture." He often journeyed to the Hebrard Foundry on the outskirts of Paris to pick up pointers. In his lifetime, he exhibited only one statue, an awkward ballet rat dressed in a real gauze tutu and hair ribbon. But even this and a few other waxworks caused his friend Renoir to exclaim: "Why, Degas is the greatest living sculptor." Degas was not so sure, once remarked: "To be survived by sculpture in bronze--what a responsibility! Bronze is so very indestructible."

When death put an end to his indecision in 1917, nearly 150 uncast statues were found in his studio, half of them already broken. The rest were sent to the Hebrard Foundry to be cast after World War I. Twenty-two bronzes were made of each figure, but with such exquisite care that the originals survived unharmed. Such studies as Dancer Putting on Her Stocking (see cut), only 18 inches high, show what could have been lost. Working freely and using broken paintbrush handles and odd bits of wire for stiffening, the artist molded a quick study of a dancer observed at a moment where awkwardness and beauty balance. In its very casualness it is as close as the viewer can come to Degas' actual moment of creation. As such, it is well worth the study. For in his masterly ability to render form in motion, few artists have surpassed Degas.

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