This portrait represents Mathilde Salle, a well-known performer in the Paris Opera ballet, who posed for Degas in 1892. Degas produced many small sculptures in wax for his own use, including dancers, bathers and horses as well as some portrait heads like this one. After his death, the best preserved of these waxes were repaired and cast in bronze; from the bronzes a limited number of casts were made. Degas himself was reluctant to cast his works in bronze, a medium he described as “for eternity.”

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