Degas at the Races: Paintings and Drawings
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Three Jockeys, c. 1900, pastel on tracing paper, mounted on board, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Partial and Promised Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Dillon, 1992. (1992.103.1) © 1996 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art
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Degas was intrigued with the visual image as a two-dimensional object. He did not always try to create the illusion of three dimensions. In his later work he explored the interaction between flatness and surface. This is especially true in Degas' pastels, such as Three Jockeys, a wonderful blend of his love of line and color.
After about 1900, Degas produced virtually no paintings. Pastel, which Degas had begun to explore in the 1870s, became his medium of choice. (Of course, he still made drawings and sculpture, which will be discussed later.) The pastels contain a sense of Degas' presence, of his hand moving across the paper, creating a rich, lush, dense surface. In Three Jockeys there is a distinct graphic quality in the white pastel that zigzags across the foreground. Notice the vibrant colors--pinks and greens and darker greens and blues and purples. The sky recalls the audacious hues of the sky in Scene from the Steeplechase, even in the curious halo effects--here yellow, in the painting, pink.
Yet Degas has not become fully abstract, and in some places, he is reworking motifs from his own art. If we recall the horse in the center of the earlier painting At the Race: Before the Start, the same pose--with the jockey trying to gain control-- reappears at the far right. The jockey in the foreground who is riding on the balking horse is found in a number of Degas' drawings and paintings. Degas is again using his favorite motifs and beloved themes, but with greater emphasis on surface design. The horse has become abstract and lacking in detail, yet there is no confusion as to its identity, even though it is rendered in fantastic colors--green, yellow, and pink. These are dramatic images, incredibly alive. For all their simplification, they're not static, because the energy of the horse and the energy of the hand of the artist can be sensed throughout. This pastel is one of the last works Degas made of the horse.