![]() Artist Edgar Degas selected Marie at the Paris Opera ballet school as his model for sketches, drawings and, most famously, the haunting sculpture, “Little Dancer Aged Fourteen.” She earned a pittance for four-hour stretches and kept the skinny body that Degas preferred because she was half-starved. They actually existed, living in a squalid area of Montmartre with their widowed mother, who spent her life in an absinthe bottle absent worries about rent or food. The Painted Girls focuses on the van Goethem sisters, Antoinette, Marie and Charlotte, and their early lives in 19th century Paris. The other is how begrudgingly I began to turn the pages as the end approached. Toronto author Cathy Marie Buchanan’s writing is so good that I rushed through this book for the kinship I felt with girls whose lives, except for ballet, were totally different than my own. No matter how much I loved ballet or practised at the barre, I would never have the highly arched instep of Charlotte van Goethem, who’s not yet 8 when The Painted Girls begins in 1878. ![]() ![]() ![]() How could I be jealous of a fictional child’s feet? Every time Antoinette van Goethem admires the “dancer’s feet” of her little sister Charlotte, memories of my years in ballet class came flooding back. ![]()
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