Degas at the Races: Sculpture

X-radiograph image of Horse with Jockey; Horse Galloping, Turning the Head to the Right, the Feet not Touching the Ground, Conservation Laboratory, National Gallery of Art, Washington previous next back to sculpture

This X-ray shows a sculpture interior very different from that of Horse at Trough. Degas' later armature is an ingenious design that incorporated movable joints for his horses. Whereas in Horse at Trough Degas had fashioned the inner structure of knee joints by attaching bundled wire to rigid pieces that delineated the upper and lower leg, here Degas put strands of wire together with one twist and then coiled little pieces of wire around these braided wires to form joints that he could slide up and down the fixed wires. You can also see a bed-spring shape at the four hooves and across the back bone. These coils have been observed in only one other sculpture by Degas.