Collections: American Art: The Egyptian Dancers (Two Egyptian Dancers)

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The Egyptian Dancers (Two Egyptian Dancers)

Anne Estelle Rice was a young modernist at work in Paris when she created The Egyptian Dancers, inspired by the 1909 Paris debut of the Ballets Russes with an avant-garde production of Cleopatra. Determined to evoke the ballet’s angular choreography and sensual costumes (by Leon Bakst), Rice employed decoratively simplified forms and unnatural colors inspired by a French modernist aesthetic called Fauvism (fauve means “wild beast”). Several years after its acclaimed European debut in 1910, the painting was among numerous works that Rice left in the care of the American writer Theodore Dreiser when an exhibition planned for New York was subverted by wartime concerns. Untraced for the past sixty years, this recently recovered canvas will stand among the most significant achievements by an American modernist, or by an American woman, at work among the turn-of-the-century Parisian avant-garde.

Artist: Anne Estelle Rice, 1877-1959
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dates: 1910
Dimensions: 57 x 73 in. (144.8 x 185.4 cm) (show scale)
Collections:American Art
Museum Location: This item is not on view
Accession Number: 2007.51
Credit Line: Dick S. Ramsay Fund
Rights Statement: © Anne Estelle Rice
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Caption: Anne Estelle Rice (1877-1959). The Egyptian Dancers (Two Egyptian Dancers), 1910. Oil on canvas, 57 x 73 in. (144.8 x 185.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Dick S. Ramsay Fund, 2007.51. © Anne Estelle Rice
Image: overall, 2007.51_PS1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2008
"CUR" at the beginning of an image file name means that the image was created by a curatorial staff member. These study images may be digital point-and-shoot photographs, when we don't yet have high-quality studio photography, or they may be scans of older negatives, slides, or photographic prints, providing historical documentation of the object.

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woman artist [x]		feet [x]
dance [x]		Art Deco [x]
decorative [x]		geometric [x]
anklets [x]		Nude [x]
Cleopatra [x]		Ballets Russes [x]
Egyptianizing [x]		American [x]
painting [x]		modern [x]
female [x]		women [x]
20th century [x]		1910 [x]
oil on canvas [x]		figures [x]

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