Edgar Degas (1834-1917)

Cheval au galop sur le pied droit

Details

Edgar Degas (1834-1917)
Cheval au galop sur le pied droit
stamped with signature, numbered and stamped with foundry mark 'Degas 47/E A.A. HBRARD, CIRE PERDUE' (Lugt 658; on the top of the base)
bronze with brown patina
Height: 12 in. (30.5 cm.)
Original wax model executed in the late 1880s; this bronze version cast 1919-1921 in an edition of twenty-two, numbered A to T plus two casts reserved for the Degas heirs and the founder, Hbrard.

Provenance

Max Kaganovitch, Paris.
The Lefevre Gallery (Alex. Reid and Lefevre, Ltd.), London (1951).
Mrs. M.A. Willis, London; sale, Sotheby's, London, 28 June 1972, lot 10.
Spencer Samuels, New York.
Fletcher Jones, Los Angeles; sale, Christie's, London, 2 December 1975, lot 39.
British Rail Pension Fund Collection, London; sale, Sotheby's, London, 4 April 1989, lot 10.

Literature

J. Rewald, Degas's Sculpture, London, 1957, no. VI pls. 3-5 (another cast illustrated).
F. Russoli and F. Minervino, L'opera completa di Degas, Milan, 1970, no. S41 (another cast illustrated).
C.W. Millard, The Sculpture of Edgar Degas, Princeton, 1976, pl. 60 (another cast illustrated).
J. Rewald, Degas's Complete Sculpture: Catalogue Raisonn, San Francisco, 1990, pp. 54-55, no. VI (original wax model and another cast illustrated).
S. Campbell, "A Catalogue of Degas' Bronzes," Apollo, vol. CXLII, no. 402, August 1995, pp. 33-34, no. 47 (another cast illustrated, fig. 45).

Exhibited

Glasgow, Museum and Art Gallery, 1984-1988, on loan.

Lot Essay

Degas began to frequent Longchamps racetrack in the late 1860s and would sketch and paint from memory the powerful racing horses. In the late 1880s, he decided to capture his equine subjects in sculptural form. The sculptures that he produced of these thoroughbred horses were some of the most daring in his oeuvre. He created them without bases with the intention of making them more immediate and accessible to the viewer. He also mimicked, in three-dimensional form, the movements of the horses in Eadweard Muybridge's photographic, sequential studies of horses from the 1870s.

The movement of this horse clearly echoes Muybridge's Sally Gardener Running, the title of frames 5 and 6 from The Horse in Motion (C.W. Millard, op. cit., pp. xiv and 60, pl. 61, illustrated).