Born into a cultivated family in Paris on July 19, 1834, Edgar Degas was ecouraged at an early age to become an artist. Degas was generally regarded as one of the most important and respected artists of his day. Pissarro hailed him as "certainly the greatest artist of our epoch." Degas died in Paris on September 27, 1917.

He was a staunch supporter of the Impressionist exhibitions over the period 1874 to 1886. During this time, his eyesight became progressively worse, and he did not exhibit any of his works in public after 1886. He had built his reputation on oil painting, but in this final period he turned to engraving and sculpture.

A favorite subject for Degas was ballet dancers at the Opera. His studies of dancers, engaged in a variety of poses, are the single most famous and substantial group of compositions. His interest dates from the painting Orchestra at the Opera (ca. 1869) and continues throughout the rest of his career. Degas was fascinated by the movement and gestures of dance, and he tried to capture these qualities in his work. In his oil and pastel paintings, Degas especially uses the interaction of form and color to create individual moods.

Although Degas approached sculpture relatively late in life, he attacked some of the same problems in three dimensions that had occupied his two-dimensional paintings. Spanish Dance depicts a ballerina in a characteristic pose, possibly dancing a fandango. The expression of the piece is achieved entirely through the body; the features of the face have almost no expressive value. A careful examination also reveals that the lifted leg is significantly longer than the straight leg. This distortion of the figure is hardly noticable on initial viewing, and it is a tribute to Degas' genius that his liberty does not detract from the beauty of the form.

It should be noted that Degas did not cast any of his sculpture in bronze himself. He apparently prefered the flexibility of wax and clay. This piece was cast at a Parisian foundry after Degas died. A large number of the original wax sculpture is preserved in the United States in the collection of Paul Mellon and the National Gallery.

For further reading, see the book of Charles Millard, The Sculpture of Edgar Degas (Princeton University Press, 1976).