.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
拍品專文
Depicting a spirited thoroughbred in motion, Cheval au trot, les pieds ne touchant pas le sol is a dynamic, gestural sculpture from a large and important body of work investigating movement of the equine body that Degas created, starting in the 1860s. This sculpture captures the horse lifting forward in a playful, bounding trot, recalling the gamboling chargers on the Parthenon frieze, the cocked foot echoing the bronze horses of Saint Mark’s, and Verrocchio’s mount of Colleoni. Breaking from a static, earthbound posture, Cheval au trot, les pieds ne touchant pas le sol is suspended without contact to the ground, investigating the muscular tension and shifting weight needed to move through space.
Degas was a frequent visitor to the racecourse Longchamps and had closely observed horses in movement for his early studies of the subject during the 1860s and 1870s. He would later become fascinated by Eadweard Muybridge’s revolutionary stop-action photographs, published definitively in 1887, which took his understanding to a new level, showing every phase of bodily movement throughout the sequences of trotting, prancing, rearing, balking, and galloping steeds. “Even though I had the opportunity to mount a horse quite often,” Degas later admitted, “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, D.C., 1998, p. 185). The sculpted nature of this work underscores the inherent wildness of its subject; and while Degas displays an intimate understanding of the physiognomy of the horse, he articulates his subject in a suggestive rather than fully descriptive manner, seen in the ambiguities of detail in the tail and head. Unlike contemporary animalier sculptors such as Emmanuel Frémiet who favored the laborious reproduction of tiny anatomical details, Degas pioneered a looser and more “painterly” handling, reflecting his growing assurance in his craft and his passionate enthusiasm for his equine subject matter. As late as 1888, over two decades after his first studies of the subject, Degas could still write, exhilarated, to his friend and fellow artist Albert Bartholomé, “Happy sculptor...I have not yet made enough horses!” (quoted in ibid., p. 197).
Degas was a frequent visitor to the racecourse Longchamps and had closely observed horses in movement for his early studies of the subject during the 1860s and 1870s. He would later become fascinated by Eadweard Muybridge’s revolutionary stop-action photographs, published definitively in 1887, which took his understanding to a new level, showing every phase of bodily movement throughout the sequences of trotting, prancing, rearing, balking, and galloping steeds. “Even though I had the opportunity to mount a horse quite often,” Degas later admitted, “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, D.C., 1998, p. 185). The sculpted nature of this work underscores the inherent wildness of its subject; and while Degas displays an intimate understanding of the physiognomy of the horse, he articulates his subject in a suggestive rather than fully descriptive manner, seen in the ambiguities of detail in the tail and head. Unlike contemporary animalier sculptors such as Emmanuel Frémiet who favored the laborious reproduction of tiny anatomical details, Degas pioneered a looser and more “painterly” handling, reflecting his growing assurance in his craft and his passionate enthusiasm for his equine subject matter. As late as 1888, over two decades after his first studies of the subject, Degas could still write, exhilarated, to his friend and fellow artist Albert Bartholomé, “Happy sculptor...I have not yet made enough horses!” (quoted in ibid., p. 197).