Cheval au trot, les pieds ne touchant pas le sol

As Degas explained to the critic François Thiébault-Sisson, he had turned to sculpture in portraying equine subjects because he felt that “to achieve exactitude so perfect in the representation of animals that a feeling of life is conveyed, one had to go into three dimensions” (quoted in Degas, Beyond Impressionism, exh. cat., The National Gallery, London, 1996, p. 255). Cheval au trot, les pieds ne touchant pas le sol relates fundamentally to the groundbreaking series of motion photography, Eadweard Muybridge’s study Horse Trotting at Full Speed, 12 Phases which proved that at certain moments of the trot none of the horse’s hooves touch the ground. Degas saw the photographs when they were first published in France in the scientific journal La Nature on 14 December 1878. It proved groundbreaking for Degas, who explained, “even though I had the opportunity to mount a horse quite often, even though I could distinguish a thoroughbred from a half-bred without too much difficulty, even though I had a fairly good understanding of the animal’s anatomy […] I was completely ignorant of the mechanism of its movements [before Muybridge]” (quoted in Degas at the Races, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1998, p. 185). Cheval au trot, les pieds ne touchant pas le sol depicts a suspended thoroughbred highlighting the muscular tension and balanced weight that allow the animal to move through space. Yet, for all its anatomical exactitude, the sculpture manages to achieve a marvellous balance between realism and conveying an almost painterly impression of the subject through the loose modulation of the bronze. Movingly elegant, it is an exquisite testament to Degas’s equine passion; even in 1888, more than two decades after his first studies of the subject the artist wrote to his friend and fellow artist Albert Bartholomé, “Happy sculptor […] but I have not yet made enough horses.” (quoted in ibid., p. 197). The 1917-1918 photographs taken by Gauthier in the artist’s studio following his death show several cracks to the original wax model for Cheval au trot, les pieds ne touchant, which were not altered before the casting of the bronze edition. These are preserved in the present work and should be considered intrinsic to the sculpture.