# What the Opera Paid Marie van Goethem > The model for Degas's Little Dancer is documented in a payroll and two lines of his handwriting. The famous sentence about her face was written about two other drawings. > The Study - 2026-09-27 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/what-the-opera-paid-marie-van-goethem/ ## Key points - The sentence most often quoted against her face was written about two other pictures. Huysmans's low foreheads and jutting jaws belong to two pastels called Criminal Physiognomies, which he listed among the drawn and painted works and closed off before he reached the wax. The critic who did read vice into her face is Paul Mantz in Le Temps of 23 April 1881. - The only continuous record of her life is her employer's bookkeeping. An annual contract of 900 francs, a monthly salary of 75 francs, bonuses of 20 to 30 francs in her school years and 109 francs in May 1880, all of it in the AJ 13 series at the Archives nationales. - An afternoon of posing paid her about what her mother earned in five or six evenings. A model's fee was five to six francs for a four-hour sitting, and her mother was paid one franc per performance as an additional dresser. - Her dismissal in 1882 survives as a document and its cause does not. A note in Pluque's handwriting countersigned by Vaucorbeil records that she has been dismissed, and no cause is stated in it. The payroll goes further and shows no disciplinary measures for either sister for days missed or illness, and the cafes come from a newspaper paragraph whose entire argument is the word consequently. - The Louvre still prints an 1864 birth date, and 1864 is the year of a sister who lived eighteen days. Marie Genevieve van Goethem was born on 7 June 1865, and our own record has the right date. - The criminal reading of the sculpture is a modern argument, not a contemporary one. The National Gallery's own scholarly edition attributes it to Anthea Callen and Douglas Druick, says it is rarely questioned and then concludes that Degas apparently chose against those physiognomic signs in the finished figure. - A comparison to a fictional character is now a database field. Kahane's sentence compares the mother to Mrs Cardinal, a character in Ludovic Halevy's novels, and Wikidata's entry for Marie van Goethem lists prostitute as one of three occupations, with no qualifier and no reference of any kind. ## The most quoted sentence about her face was written about two other pictures ## The only continuous record of her life is her employer's bookkeeping ## Her name survives twice in Degas's own handwriting ## The dismissal is a document and the reason for it is an inference ## The Louvre still prints an 1864 birth date, and 1864 belongs to a sister who lived eighteen days ## What is printed about her that no document supports ## Everyone names her flatly, and the one hedge is the clause her citers drop Marie van Goethem is not a mystery, she is a filing outcome. Her employer kept books and those books survive, so we know to the franc what she earned in May 1880, we can read the note that ended her job and we can see that the payroll records no disciplinary measure against her. The courts and the police destroyed or lost theirs, so the years after 1882 are gone. Much of what is said about her was written about something else: two pastels of accused criminals that Huysmans listed separately, a novel about a fictional mother, a gossip paragraph built on the word consequently and a birth year belonging to a sister who lived eighteen days. One contemporary did write it about her, and Paul Mantz should be named for it rather than quietly folded into Huysmans. Strip out the borrowed sentences and what remains is small, exact and unremarkable, which is the most any working fourteen-year-old could ask of an archive. ## Questions **Who was the model for Degas's Little Dancer Aged Fourteen?** Marie Genevieve van Goethem, born in Paris on 7 June 1865 to Belgian parents, a pupil and then a member of the corps de ballet at the Paris Opera. She was identified from an inscription in Degas's own hand, 36 rue de Douai Marie, on a drawing now in the Louvre as RF 4646. Martine Kahane, who established most of what is documented about her, writes more carefully that she was the model, or one of the models, for the sculpture. **What was Marie van Goethem paid?** From 1880 she held an annual contract with the Paris Opera of 900 francs, a monthly salary of 75 francs, with bonuses on top when she danced. In May 1880, salary and bonuses together, she was paid 109 francs. As a pupil from 1878 her bonuses ran between 20 and 30 francs; Kahane records no figure for the bonuses under the 1880 contract. The figures come from the Opera's monthly bookkeeping in the AJ 13 series at the Archives nationales. A model's fee for a four-hour sitting was five to six francs in a note Emile Zola made in 1885. **Why was she dismissed from the Paris Opera?** No document gives a reason. A note of April 1882 in Pluque's handwriting and countersigned by Vaucorbeil records that she has been dismissed, held at the Archives nationales as AJ 13 905A, and no cause is stated in it. Kahane adds that the payroll shows no disciplinary measures for either sister for days missed or illnesses, so absenteeism is not merely unproven but argued against. The often repeated story about Montmartre cafes comes from a newspaper paragraph of 10 February 1882 whose reasoning is that she had two sisters at the Opera and consequently frequented them. **Did Huysmans call the Little Dancer a criminal type?** No. The phrase about low foreheads and jutting jaws appears in his list of Degas's drawn and painted works, applied to two pastels of criminal physiognomies, and he closes that list before he reaches the sculpture. Of the wax itself he wrote that it is the only truly modern attempt he knew of in sculpture, though he was still harsh about the figure's face, which he called sickly and old before its time. The critic who gave the fullest criminal reading of her face was Paul Mantz in Le Temps of 23 April 1881. **Is anything known about her life after 1882?** Nothing that scholarship has confirmed. A death date of 7 December 1935 circulates, and our record for the sculpture treats it as unverified rather than established. Kahane reports that the legal records for the period were destroyed at the courthouse rather than archived and that police records had long vanished, which is why the trail stops where it does. ## Sources - [1] Martine Kahane, 'Le modele', her section of Kahane, Delphine Pinasa, Wilfried Piollet and Sara Campbell, Enquete sur la Petite Danseuse de quatorze ans de Degas, in the authorised abbreviated English translation, read in full for the Archives nationales AJ 13 shelfmarks (838, 842, 840, 841, 905, 905A, 1005A), the annual contract of 900 francs and monthly 75 francs, the 20 to 30 franc bonuses, Charlotte's 852 franc contract, the May 1880 figures of 109 and 82 francs, the mother's 1 franc per performance as additional dresser, the examination costs and the 47.80 franc New Year gifts, the April 1882 dismissal note in Pluque's hand countersigned by Vaucorbeil, the L'Evenement notice of 10 February 1882 quoted verbatim, the Cardinal comparison and the Prostitution section, the family reconstruction including the first Marie who died at eighteen days and Marie Genevieve born 7 June 1865, the address list, the Dc 327d notebook shelfmark, and the author's own account of the destroyed legal and police records. Also used for her introduction stating flatly that the model for the little dancer was Marie Van Goethem born in 1865, for the payroll showing no disciplinary measures for either sister for days missed or illnesses, for the statement that the 1880 contract verifies the residence at 36 rue de Douai in agreement with the notebook, and for Antoinette's sentence in 1882 of three months for stealing 700 francs from a patron at the Chat Noir and her incarceration at Saint-Lazare. - [2] Joris-Karl Huysmans, L'Exposition des independants en 1881, in L'Art Moderne, Paris, 1883, pages 225 to 257, read in the scanned full text of a later edition where the passages sit at pages 250 to 252. Used for the list of drawn and painted works ending and you will have the list of the drawn or painted works brought by this artist, the two sketches of criminal physiognomies with low foreheads and jutting jaws, the turn to the wax statue called Petite Danseuse de quatorze ans, the description of the face as sickly and old before its time, the verdict that the statuette is the only truly modern attempt in sculpture he knows of, and the absence of any mention of Lombroso in the volume. - [3] Musee du Louvre, collections, Edgar Degas, Quatre etudes d'une danseuse, RF 4646 Recto, Departement des Arts graphiques, charcoal with white heightening on pink paper, 0.49 by 0.32 m, about 1878 to 1879, for the pencil inscription 36 rue de Douai Marie at the upper left, for the statement that the inscription in Degas's hand allowed the model to be identified, and for the birth date the entry gives as 17 fevrier 1864. - [4] National Gallery of Art, Washington, Edgar Degas, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, 1878 to 1881, accession 1999.80.28, for the materials, the dimensions of 98.9 by 34.7 by 35.2 cm and weight of 22.226 kg, the 1881 exhibition entry as number 12 catalogued Petite Danseuse de quatorze ans (statuette en cire), the provenance from the artist's heirs through the Hebrard foundry to Paul Mellon and the 1999 bequest, the X-radiography findings including the smaller preliminary head and the paintbrushes in the arms, and the bibliography listing the Kahane and others 1998 study in 48/14: La Revue du Musee d'Orsay number 7, pages 48 to 71. - [5] Art Institute of Chicago, Edgar Degas, Three Studies of a Dancer in Fourth Position, 1879/80, accession 1962.703, charcoal and pastel with stumping and touches of brush and black wash on grayish-tan laid paper, 48 by 61.6 cm, signed recto lower left in black pastel, for the gallery's own description naming the sitter as the model Marie van Goethem in left profile, right profile and facing the viewer, and for the exhibition history including Degas and the Little Dancer at the Joslyn Art Museum in 1998. - [6] Emile Zola, Carnets d'enquete, edited by Henri Mitterand, Paris, Plon, 1986, page 252, cited by Kahane and others for the fee of five to six francs for a four-hour sitting recorded while Zola was gathering material for L'Oeuvre in 1885, and for his note that prices had since risen to 10 francs. - [7] Wikidata, entity Q6763113, Marie van Goethem, read 27 September 2026 through the entity data endpoint. Property P106 occupation carries three values, ballet dancer (Q805221), model (Q4610556) and prostitute (Q14915751), none of them qualified or referenced to a document about her. Property P569 gives the birth as 7 June 1865 and P570 gives the death as 7 December 1935 without qualification. - [8] National Gallery of Art, 'Iconographic Interpretations', part of the scholarly online edition Modeling Movement: Degas's Dancers, read in a browser after direct fetches were refused. Used to identify the two works Huysmans listed as the pastels Criminal Physiognomies of 1880 and 1881, one in a private collection and one in the National Museum in Belgrade; for the attribution of the criminal reading of the wax to Anthea Callen and to Douglas Druick, initially with Peter Zegers, and the statement that their arguments are rarely questioned; for the edition's own conclusion that the figure lacks the standard atavistic signs and that Degas apparently chose against them in the finished figure; and for Paul Mantz's review in Le Temps of 23 April 1881, page 3, quoted there in French in note 7, on the blotched arms truly horrible to see and on her little muzzle projecting with bestial effrontery in a face where all the vices imprint their detestable promise. The same note 19 records that Mantz's word sauteuse is occasionally given erroneously as danseuse. - [9] National Gallery of Art, 'Edgar Degas Only Made One Little Dancer. And It's Ours.', the gallery's own article on the wax, read in a browser. Used, with the object page, to establish that the National Gallery names Marie van Goethem as the model without qualification rather than leaving the identification open.