ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I OWE A LARGE DEBT OF GRATITUDE to Martine Kahane and Henri Loyrette, noted experts on Degas’s work, for the kindness they showed me during our interviews and the invaluable information they gave me on the Little Dancer.

I would also like to thank Claude Perez and Jean-Raymond Fanlo, professors at the University of Aix–Marseille, and Philippe Forest, a writer and a professor at the University of Nantes, for their generous advice during the writing of my doctoral thesis, “Practice and Theory in Artistic and Literary Creation,” of which the present work is an offshoot.

Finally, a thousand thanks to my editor, Alice Andigné, for her attentiveness, enthusiasm, and erudition.