Description:
Relief of a nude danser, holding a tambourine in her proper left hand and raising her right hand, against a garland backdrop.

Label Text:
This lively figure of a nude female dancer, moving her body to the rhythm of the tambourine in her left hand, is the product of a collaboration between the elderly and severely arthritic Impressionist painter Renoir and a young French sculptor. It is a hybrid between a relief sculpture and a statuette: while the left side of the dancer’s body is embedded into the background, her right arm raised in air and right leg stepping out of the frame are in the round. This adds to the dynamism of the sculpture, creating an illusion of motion: try walking from the left of the figure toward her right, and observe the dancer come to life.

-Gülru Çakmak, Assistant Professor of Nineteenth-Century European Art, University of Massachussetts Amherst
A Very Long Engagement: Nineteenth-Century Sculpture and Its Afterlives (July 29, 2017 - May 27, 2018)

Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=MH+1997.9.1

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