Les Trois Grâces (The Three Graces)

These three dancing figures are a smaller, plaster version of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux's marble Dance, which crowned the façade of the Paris Opéra. When the sculpture was unveiled, the public, accustomed to the idealism of the neoclassical style, was outraged. Carpeaux's realistic rendering of female flesh provoked vandalism and threats of removal. Carpeaux's erotically charged group at the same time generated fascination and interest, the sculptor produced numerous bronze, plaster, and terra-cotta copies of heads, single figures, and groups from his composition.