Degas at the Races: Sculpture

Horse with Jockey; Horse Galloping, Turning the Head to the Right, the Feet not Touching the Ground, mid 1870s, dark brown and reddish-brown wax and green clay, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia previous next back to sculpture

Horse with Jockey has now been dated to the 1870s, at least a decade later than Horse at Trough. A photograph from 1917ñ1918, showing all four hooves off the ground, documents Degas' introduction of movement in his sculpture. In this slide, however, note that the back right hoof touches the sculpture's base, a change that probably occurred when the piece was being prepared for casting.

The outer coating of this horse is a red-brown tinted wax. But look under the neck and along the horse's flanks: the green underlayer peeping through is Degas' modeling clay mixture. Degas may have intended to reveal the clay, or perhaps chunks of the sculpture's wax surface fell off. The simultaneous visibility of internal green-tinted clay with some red-brown wax over it suggests that Degas revised the piece or intended it to look "unfinished." In either case, it is a beautiful window into the materials and original colors of the work. When reproduced in bronze, however, some of the modeled texture and color nuances are not conveyed.