Degas at the Races: Sculpture
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Study of a Mustang, c. 1860/1862, cast 1919/1921, bronze, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Mrs. Lessing J. Rosenwald
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Although Degas is best known as a painter and draftsman, he was also a sculptor from almost the beginning of his career. When friends came to visit Degas in the three-story Paris studio where he lived and worked, they were as likely to find him modeling wax or clay as they were to find him at the easel. Few outside of his immediate circle knew of this work, for Degas did not, with one exception, exhibit his sculpture. Only after his death in 1917, when his dealer Joseph Durand-Ruel inventoried his last studio, were more than 150 pieces of sculpture found, a number of them unfinished, falling apart, or badly broken up. It was the posthumous bronze casting of those of his original wax and clay pieces, determined to be in sufficient condition to be reproduced, that brought public attention to Degas as a sculptor.
Degas himself was not drawn to making bronzes. The medium's permanence was ill-suited to the way he worked, which involved constant changing and revision. The casting of Degas' waxes was undertaken through his heirs after his death. Degas' brother and his sister's children contracted with the Hébrard Foundry, which, beginning in 1919, molded and cast twenty-two sets (not all of which were complete) of seventy-four works, including a full set each for the Degas heirs and the foundry. Albino Palazzolo, the master founder, took care to preserve Degas' original sculpture; unfortunately, four waxes were lost in the casting and they are known today only in their bronze versions. You can imagine the interest of the public in the bronzes of Degas' works, known almost exclusively by close associates before that. When these bronzes were disseminated around the world, some museums bought entire sets. Other institutions and private collectors bought individual pieces. It was not until the 1950s, in the aftermath of World War II, that Degas' original wax and clay sculpture--from which secondary waxes were made for the lost-wax bronze casting process--were discovered in the basement of the Hébrard Foundry.
Today, the National Gallery has the largest public collection of Degas' original waxes, seventeen in the permanent collection and thirty-one as a promised gift. We have been able to study the materials, the armature, and the X-radiographs (X-rays), we have learned that Degas' sculpture has increasingly complex wire armatures (interior structures), and combines wax and clay with experimental "filler" materials such as wine-bottle and mustard-jar corks, long nails, a door-hinge pin, and even a salt-shaker top. By comparing the sculpture to stylistic changes in Degas' paintings and pastels, we are developing a chronology for the sculpture, which Degas did not date or sign.