The current popularity of this work, Degas's largest and most ambitious sculpture, belies its tumultuous early history. Degas exhibited the original wax model in 1881, at the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition in Paris, where it was greeted with outrage. As is so often the case with Degas's work, the controversy centered on the artist's resolute refusal to idealize his model, an actual ballet student named Marie van Goethem whom the artist often paid to pose for him. Most viewers today find her quite endearing. But at the time critics objected to her crude features, and one irate reviewer demanded to know: "Why is her forehead, as are her lips, so profoundly marked by vice?"

No less shocking was the array of unconventional materials of which she was constructed. The model that Degas displayed was made of wax, making it considerably more life-like than the bronze casts, like this one, that were taken from it. What's more, the original Dancer wore a wig of horsehair, as well as a real cloth bodice and gauze tutu. The illusionism of this assemblage shocked many critics, who were accustomed to seeing sculptures executed in the pure media of metal or stone. Many challenged the high-art status of the work, comparing it to costumed mannequins in shop windows and to wax-work figures in ethnographic museums.