Degas at the Races: Sculpture
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Eadweard Muybridge, "Daisy jumping a hurdle, saddled, preparing for the leap," photograph, plate 636 from Animal Locomotion, 1887, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
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Horse Balking is dated about the same time that the first stop-action photographs documenting the actual rather than presumed way that horses move were published in America and Europe. Leland Stanford, governor of California, financed studies of animal and human locomotion by photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Muybridge captured on film the various gaits of horses--such as this one demonstrating a jump. Muybridge's work proved, for example, that when a horse gallops, all four of its legs are raised off the ground in an unusual "tucked-up" position rather than splayed out like a rocking horse, as was previously assumed. The only time a horse's legs extend out in front of the chest and behind the tail is when it is actually jumping a hurdle. The position of the horse's legs in the painting Scene from the Steeplechase is, in fact, a proper depiction of a horse crossing a hurdle.
In addition to having jockeys, or models, seated on horses, Muybridge took some of his photographs with a grid behind them. The grid enabled artists to make anatomical calculations and measure exact height locations in order to represent the natural proportions and postures of horses walking, cantering, galloping, and jumping.
Degas may have made Horse Balking with its movable sliding armature after having seen a Muybridge photograph or having worked on the sculpture with a photograph or reproduction at hand. In one of his notebooks, Degas had written on the bottom of the page--upside down, as if he had found out about something and had to write himself a note so that he wouldn't forget--the title and date of the magazine, "La Nature," in which the first Muybridge photographs were reproduced in Paris on 14 December 1878. So there is no question that Degas knew of Muybridge's work and was influenced by it.
Although Degas' precise intent with this sculpture may never be known, evidence from visual examination, X-rays, and the Muybridge photographs the artist knew brings us closer to understanding the nuances Degas understood. It makes it easier to picture Degas in his studio working on something, and then reworking it, using various points of reference. Degas was striving to capture something real, but in a modern way--not faithfully reproducing every physical detail as did the animaliers of his era, but creating an image that reads the way someone would see or perhaps remember it.