Edgar Degas

The Artist,
by whose Estate sold, Galeries Georges Petit, Paris, Atelier Edgar Degas, 3ème vente, 2-4 July 1919, lot 141;
G. Vaudoyer, Paris;
with Walter Feilchenfeldt Gallery, Zurich;
where acquired in 1981

London, The Lefevre Gallery, Important Works on Paper, XIX and XX Centuries, 1977 no.8, illustrated in the catalogue;
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Degas at the Races, 1998, no. 45, illustrated in color in the catalogue

P-A. Lemoisne, Degas et son œuvre, vol. II, Paris 1946, no. 153, reproduced p. 77

Executed on buff paper which has been t-hinged to a mount at two places along the to edge of verso. The left edge is deckled and the top and right edges have been cut. Artist's pinholes visible at the upper corners. There are a couple minor nicks, most notable upper right corner as well as two small repairs to the extreme lower left edge. Faint mat- staining is visible to the extreme left edge and minor staining is also visible to the repairs at lower left and along the top center edge. The work is in good condition.
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A passionate observer of modern life, fascinated with performance and ritual, Degas developed two main themes throughout his artistic career: ballet dancers and horse races. During the 1860s and 1870s, Degas depicted racehorses only occasionally; he increasingly focused on this subject from the 1880s onwards, probably responding to the encouragement of dealers and collectors among whom these paintings were gaining in popularity. In depicting horse racing scenes, Degas followed the nineteenth century tradition of equestrian painting established by artists such as Théodore Géricault, Eugène Delacroix and Alfred de Dreux, and taken up by his fellow Impressionists, Manet and Toulouse-Lautrec. Degas was fascinated not only by the social spectacle and excitement of a day at the races, but also by the more informal situations before and after the race itself.

The present work is part of an important series of mixed media drawings executed in 1868-70, when Degas was first experimenting with the form of the jockey. In many of these works, the jockey portrayed could be the same one from two points of view. Some of them are stained with dark brown essence; this one is notably light-filled. Writing about this group, Jean Sutherland Boggs commented on the present work: “The light is so luminous that is seems to dissolve the substance of the body of the second jockey so that all that is left are rudimentary but highly graphic lines. Even in the front jockey at the left Degas works freely with line, changing his mind and leaving the evidence of it generously, as if the lines were the body of the jockey vibrating in space.¹ 

The parallels between Degas’ depictions of dancers and those of horses have often been pointed out by art historians. In the same way as the artist often captured ballet dancers away from the spotlight of the stage, in the more informal moments such as warming up before a performance or resting after a rehearsal, his horse paintings usually focus on the moments before or after the race. Although the technique with which Degas depicted horses and riders underwent a radical change from the more academic style of his earliest treatments of this subject in the 1860s to the later, Impressionist works, the focus away from the main action of the horse race is always present. The present work and the other drawings from this series were indispensable to the artist’s later racehorse paintings, such as Chevaux de courses of circa 1869-72 (fig. 1) where Degas shows seven jockeys in relaxed poses, moving in different directions.

These jockeys from the 1968-70 series are remarkable examples of Degas’ draftsmanship with paint and highly sympathetic records of the jockeys themselves, if not as individuals then as an essential type within the artist's work.

1. J. S. Boggs, in Degas at the Races (exhibition catalogue), op. cit., p. 138

Fig. 1, Edgar Degas, Chevaux de courses, circa 1869-72, peinture à l’essence on paper, Musée d’Orsay, Paris