If you're not a very good ballerina maybe Edgar Degas will give you a second gig as one of his Little Dancers.

The daughter of working class parents, Marie van Goethem helped with the rent by becoming a little opera rat. She joined a legion of other young, pretty girls from poverty stricken families that the Paris Opera House employed as background dancers. The whole young and poor aspect often resulted in older gentlemen taking a girl "under his wing" and "providing" for her through literal back door dealings. Seriously, the girls would meet rich dudes at the back door of the Opera House where they would go off to do ... stuff.

Marie and her family ended up moving just a few blocks away from Degas which, could explain how they met. Or, according to some people, Degas was waiting for an interesting young girl at the back of the Opera House and Marie happened to catch his eye.

When first displayed in the 1881 Impressionist Exhibition, critics loved it saying how it was the "only truly modern attempt" at sculpture. The public hated it saying she looked like a monkey and an Aztec, was a "flower of precocious depravity," and on and on. Poor girl.

Degas used Marie several other times in Dancer with Fan, Dancing Lesson, and Dancer Resting.

Perhaps she might have spent a bit too much time with Degas and not enough time at work as she was fired from the Paris Opéra about a year after she started for missing too many classes. 

Read about Marie in the fictionalised "The Painted Girls," "Marie, Dancing," or children's book "Degas and the Little Dancer."

The original sculpture is made of wax (obviously never displayed anywhere hot), and dressed with real bodice, tutu, ballet slippers and a wig of real hair. Degas then covered everything except the hairbow and tutu in more wax. The bronzes we see in museums everywhere were cast under the direction of his nieces and nephews after his death. 

This one is extra special because it's an original wax sculpture. Obtained by American philanthropist Paul Mellon in 1956 and donated by Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, along with 49 Degas waxes, 10 bronzes, and 2 plasters, to the National Gallery that his father, Andrew Mellon, founded.