The Degas Plasters

In 1955 seventy-four original plasters recording sculptures by Edgar Degas (1834–1917) were moved to the old Valsuani foundry in Paris only to reappear in France in 2004. These plasters are now being published for the first time, presenting new documentary and physical evidence regarding their dating following an in-depth analysis into the condition of Degas’s waxes at the time of his death. Technical and documentary evidence now proves that as many as half of the serialized “Hébrard” Degas bronzes now held in museum and private collections around the world were in fact cast at the Valsuani foundry in the 1950s and 1960s — long after the Hébrard foundry closed in 1935/36. All of the now cleaned 74 Degas plasters are recorded in full color illustrations in this scholarly catalogue raisonné.