Appletons English Crewel Wool Bundle - "Degas, The Singer In Green"

This is a collection of crewel yarn (1 oz. hanks) inspired by the painting "The Singer in Green" by Edgar Degas. A sales catalog of 1898 evocatively described the performer pictured in this pastel: "Skinny and with the graceful moves of a little monkey, she has just sung her ribald verses and, with a gesture that conceals an entreaty behind her smile, is inviting applause." With her small eyes, high cheeks, and low brow, the model recalls Marie van Goethem, the working-class girl who posed for Degas’s sculpture "The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer". The singer’s dress, rendered in vivid yellow, turquoise, and orange, reflects the artist’s experimentation with saturated hues and color contrasts in the mid-1880s.