The Norton Simon Museum Acquires Edgar Degas Sculpture

Degas Bronze Joins the Collection as the Museum Celebrates Its 50th Anniversary
On view starting October 2, 2025

Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917), Arabesque over the right leg, left arm in front, modeled mid- to late-1880s; cast 1919-22, bronze, 11 3/8 x 15 1/4 x 6 1/4 in. (28.9 x 38.7 x 15.9 cm), Norton Simon Art Foundation

Pasadena, CA – The Norton Simon Museum announced today that it has acquired Arabesque over the right leg, left arm in front, a bronze sculpture by Edgar Degas, the renowned 19th-century French artist known for his vivid depictions of racehorses and ballet dancers. This work joins the Museum’s collection of more than 100 objects by Degas that span nearly every decade of his career, one of the largest public collections of the artist’s work in the world.

“We are delighted to bring this extraordinary bronze into the Museum’s collection during our 50th anniversary year,” said Emily Talbot, Vice President of Collections and Chief Curator. “Not only does it fill a gap in the Museum’s collection of Degas’s bronzes—one that we have been trying to close for nearly 50 years—but it also honors Norton Simon’s commitment to collecting Degas’s works, and his fascination with the complex history of casting his sculptures in bronze.”

In 1977, two years after opening the museum that bears his name, Norton Simon acquired 69 master casts of sculptures by Edgar Degas. Called the modèle bronzes, Simon’s set was the only one cast directly from the artist’s original wax and clay statuettes, and it served as the matrix or template for the serial edition of Degas’s sculptures that may be seen in museum collections around the world.

When Simon purchased the modèles, three were inexplicably missing from the group of 72 bronzes authorized by Degas’s heirs and cast by the Parisian foundry of Adrien-Aurélien Hébrard between 1919 and 1921 (the Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen and The Schoolgirl were cast separately). The modèle of Horse Trotting, the feet not touching the ground was located in the foundry’s possession in 1979, and Simon swiftly bought it. But the other two modèles, a dancer elongated in a balletic pose known as an arabesque, and a horse lowering its head to drink, were presumed lost.

In 2001, the Norton Simon Art Foundation committed funds to purchase serial casts of Arabesque over the right leg, left arm in front and Horse at Trough to complete the collection, but a cast of the desired quality, with documented provenance, remained elusive until now. Although not a modèle, this beautiful and well-documented cast of Arabesque over the right leg, left arm in front became available in late 2024, just as the Museum was poised to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Thanks to specialists at The Fine Art Group, the art advisory firm that brought the sculpture to our attention and facilitated its sale, the Museum acquired it in late summer. Originally modeled by Degas in the mid- to late 1880s, the Arabesque captures the artist’s confidence in rendering this gravity-defying pose (although the wax original, now in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., requires an external armature to maintain its balance).

Arabesque over the right leg, left arm in front is on view starting on October 2 in the Norton Simon Museum’s 19th-century wing alongside a selection of Simon’s modèles—a fitting tribute to the Museum’s founder as the institution enters its next chapter.

To learn more about Degas’s three-dimensional works and the significance of the Museum’s collection of the artist’s modèle bronzes, watch Chief Curator Emily Talbot’s video here.