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拍品專文
The present drawing is a preparatory study for Degas' pastel Avant la course (fig. 1, The Cleveland Museum of Art), executed in 1887-89 and bought by the French collector Henri Lerolle, a close friend of the artist and the buyer of an earlier, stunning interpretation of the same subject, Avant la course (1883, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown). As J. Sutherland Boggs has commented, 'When Degas was working toward Cleveland's pastel, he made some drawings with the interpretation of the jockeys in mind, which he erased in the final version. One of these, Three Studies of a Jockey [the present work] is in black and blue pencil. On the left of the page he drew the profile of the jockey who appears second from the left in the pastel, and made two sketches on the right half of the page of the jockey at the left. To pose for these boys, Degas chose, for the figure on the left, one youth without much chin but a dashing nose and the confidence of a street urchin and, for the other two, a lad with a gentle expression in reflection, his full lips slightly petulant. A tenderness is expressed in this drawing, which even the use of black pencil for the jockey at the left and blue for the figure and the head at the right also conveys. It may be that something of this sympathy is transmitted to Cleveland's pastel even if it is not overt' (exh. cat. Degas at the Races, Washington, 1998, p. 139).
The 1880s were happier and more productive years for Degas than the previous decade. With the maturity and a more balanced sense of his artistic achievements came a greater focus on the individual and a return to the psychological portrait, from which he had first started in the early 1850s. In a decade, from 1870 to 1880, the artist's point of view changed intensely: from his scènes d'ensemble of 1871 (see Avant la course, National Gallery of Art, Washington), in which the jockeys are seen from a great distance, to the more dramatic 'close-ups' of the mid-1870s (like La course, Jockeys amateurs, 1874-87, Musée d'Orsay, Paris), where the horses and riders are closer to the picture plane. J. Sutherland Boggs has written on the works of the 1880s: 'Its horses are [...] fewer in number and much larger in relation ot the picture area... In their arrangement as a diagonal wedge back into space, the horses and their riders can suggest the undisciplined corps de ballet Degas was drawing and painting almost simultaneously, the rough grass paddock replacing the floorboards of the stage. In both arenas he was attracted to the accidental juxtapositions to be found in the moments of rest just before the entertainment takes place' (ibid., p.125).
This drawing masterfully conveys Degas' new perspective: his attention is now directed at the representation of the jockey caught in his most vulnerable moment - the tension and fear immediately before the race, observed with unprecedented tenderness and sentimental sympathy.
The 1880s were happier and more productive years for Degas than the previous decade. With the maturity and a more balanced sense of his artistic achievements came a greater focus on the individual and a return to the psychological portrait, from which he had first started in the early 1850s. In a decade, from 1870 to 1880, the artist's point of view changed intensely: from his scènes d'ensemble of 1871 (see Avant la course, National Gallery of Art, Washington), in which the jockeys are seen from a great distance, to the more dramatic 'close-ups' of the mid-1870s (like La course, Jockeys amateurs, 1874-87, Musée d'Orsay, Paris), where the horses and riders are closer to the picture plane. J. Sutherland Boggs has written on the works of the 1880s: 'Its horses are [...] fewer in number and much larger in relation ot the picture area... In their arrangement as a diagonal wedge back into space, the horses and their riders can suggest the undisciplined corps de ballet Degas was drawing and painting almost simultaneously, the rough grass paddock replacing the floorboards of the stage. In both arenas he was attracted to the accidental juxtapositions to be found in the moments of rest just before the entertainment takes place' (ibid., p.125).
This drawing masterfully conveys Degas' new perspective: his attention is now directed at the representation of the jockey caught in his most vulnerable moment - the tension and fear immediately before the race, observed with unprecedented tenderness and sentimental sympathy.