Degas at the Races: Sculpture
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Horse with Jockey; Horse Galloping on Right Foot, the Back Left Only Touching the Ground, 1890s, brown wax and cloth, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia
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This image leads to the last phase of Degas' depiction of horses in wax and clay. He continued to make sculpture, certainly after the turn of the century, but his late sculpture is almost exclusively of dancers and bathers. Horse and Jockey is probably Degas' last surviving horse sculpture, dated to the 1890s.
The work personifies movement, even in its undulated base. The jockey leans forward, in sync with his horse. And the horse has a very carefully formed head, long and extended, to indicate motion. Look closely at the horse's neck. You can actually see the fingerprints where Degas squeezed the wax, and pulled and pushed it out to get a sinuous curve, suggesting action. Little surface finish exists on the piece, which contributes further to the impression of speed. Degas' indication of muscular exertion, particularly in the neck, and of sweat and flying mane-- everything projects the essence of a horse in motion in an abstracted, yet very real, way.
All of Degas' sculpture could be called mixed media--wax, clay, cork, bits of paper, pieces of wood, wire--but this one also incorporates different types of fabrics. The jockey's shirt, his pants, and his cap are actually pieces of cloth that have been carefully applied over the wax figure and then covered with more wax. Fabric depicting either blanket or saddle is a piece of felted or matted material also covered in wax and put on the horse's back. Degas used the fabrics to provide a sense of texture. The materials also differentiate between animal and human, a distinction lacking in the earlier Horse with Jockey, which may have been experimental or unfinished.
X-rays show that the armature of Horse and Jockey is spartan--four legs, a central spine, and a small curve for a neck, but nothing extra added at this point, because Degas no longer needed to experiment with how to make his internal structure.
Above all, this late horse and jockey confirm what has already been stated about Degas: he made his sculpture as works of art. They did not operate as models for his work in other media, but are another aspect of his artistic range.