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The Egyptian Dancers (Two Egyptian Dancers)

Anne Estelle Rice

American Art

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.
MEDIUM Oil on canvas
DATES 1910
DIMENSIONS 57 × 73 in., 100 lb. (144.8 × 185.4 cm, 45.36kg) frame: 69 1/4 × 87 × 2 1/2 in. (175.9 × 221 × 6.4 cm)  (show scale)
COLLECTIONS American Art
ACCESSION NUMBER 2007.51
CREDIT LINE Dick S. Ramsay Fund
MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
CAPTION Anne Estelle Rice (1877-1959). The Egyptian Dancers (Two Egyptian Dancers), 1910. Oil on canvas, 57 × 73 in., 100 lb. (144.8 × 185.4 cm, 45.36kg). Brooklyn Museum, Dick S. Ramsay Fund, 2007.51. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2007.51_PS1.jpg)
IMAGE overall, 2007.51_PS1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2008
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RIGHTS STATEMENT © Anne Estelle Rice
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