"Scene from the Steeplechase: The Fallen Jockey," 1866. Reworked 1880-81 and circa 1897. Oil on canvas from the collection of Mr and Mrs Paul Mellon, Upperville, Va.

 

Degas at the Races

National Gallery of Art Exhibition

By Stephen May

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- All of us are familiar with the dancers of Edgar Degas - lithe ballerinas exercising, waiting in the wings, or twirling before the foot lights. For many, they define the timeless world of ballet. Less famous, but equally accomplished, are Degas' depictions of Nineteenth Century French horse racing.

Over the ages, painters and sculptors have portrayed horses, but few if any worked harder at the task or created more enduring equestrian images than Degas. Neither a rider himself nor a particularly committed fan of racing, Degas was attracted to tracks by the excitement of the events and the opportunity they offered to record the natural movements of horses and riders.

Degas (1834-1917) was drawn to the grace, beauty and powerful energy of the thoroughbreds and their talented jockeys in colorful silks. Just as he was intrigued by the sensuous agility and discipline of ballet dancers, he was fascinated by the nervous tension of horses and riders.

As he frequented race courses in Paris and in the countryside, Degas made sketches and notes on the spot. On returning to his studio he executed his finished racing pictures. Rather than doing traditional representations of races themselves or documenting individual steeds or jockeys, he created apparently impromptu, unposed, unusual views. These pictures highlight rhythms of movements, patterns of activities before and after races, and the overall atmosphere of the race-track scene. "No art is less spontaneous than mine," he often said.

The resulting works - paintings, pastels, drawings and sculpture - are showcased in the engaging exhibition, "Degas at the Races," on view at the National Gallery of Art through July 12. The first museum display devoted to the Frenchman's lifelong fascination with equestrian images, the presentation includes nearly 130 works. In addition to finished canvases and pastels, some 60 drawings document Degas' meticulous preparatory efforts. An unusual feature is 16 extremely fragile wax models of horses and riders, miraculously preserved after all these years, shown alongside bronze casts made of them.

The fully illustrated catalogue accompanying the exhibition contains essays by guest curator and Degas authority Jean Sutherland Boggs and gallery conservators Shelley Sturman and Daphne Barbour. There is a highly informative survey of the history of horse racing in France in the Nineteenth Century by Kimberly Jones, the gallery's assistant curator of French paintings.

Degas grew up in Paris in the 1830s, around the time his countrymen were developing an enthusiasm for horse racing, a taste that lasted throughout the century. Curiously, as a youngster he had no discernible association with horses, even as toys, although he clearly saw them pulling carriages and carts on city streets.

Declining to follow his father's career as a banker, Degas opted for life as an artist. As an art student he sketched horses from plaster casts of the Parthenon, filling notebooks with images suggesting a growing interest in the anatomy of lean, sinewy steeds. He further explored the subject by copying paintings by Gericault, David and Delacroix, who had recognized the potential of horses as powerful and romantic subjects.

Degas' early work reflected his academic training, but partly as a result of hobnobbing with other young painters such as Manet, Monet and Renoir, he became interested in depicting the energy, vibrancy and drama of modern life in an around Paris. In search of contemporary subjects, he frequented cafes, the circus, opera, ballet performances, and race courses. Combining subjects from the real world around him with a flair for the theatrical, Degas created striking and appealing vignettes of Nineteenth Century Paris.

His first real introduction to horses, and to traditions of horse breeding, training and racing, came in the early 1860s when he paid the first of many visits to the estate of friends in the Normandy countryside. While there he may have visited the important horse-breeding establishment in Haras-le-Pin and witnessed races at a small course in nearby Argentan.

Perhaps as a result of the latter experience he executed his initial racing pictures, notably "At the Races: The Start" (1861-62), a small but ambitious oil painting.

The energy and excitement of the depiction and the evocative composition of the picture suggest the 27 year old artist's budding passion for the subject, as well as his knowledge of contemporary British sporting prints.

The pastime that became known as the "sport of kings" was imported to France from England toward the end of the Eighteenth Century, and the first French horse race apparently took place in 1775. The first race track was established in France a year later. What with revolutions and wars with England, the sport had its ups and downs in France. Efforts to introduce British breeding and training practices were hindered, as was the importation of thoroughbred stallions and brood mares from across the English Channel. By the time Degas was born in 1834, however, horse breeding and racing had begun to flourish in his homeland.

A significant event, for Degas and others, was creation of a race track at Longchamp on the outskirts of Paris in 1857. Its accessibility to the capital city and its beautiful setting promptly made it a popular site for outings.

As Kimberly Jones notes in her catalogue entry, by the 1860s, when Degas began to pursue the subject, horse racing was one of the most popular and democratic diversion in France.

As races became more competitive and prizes richer, amateur "gentlemen" riders were supplanted by professional jockeys. Degas' depictions reflect the stringent training, diet and exercise regimens both horses and riders underwent.

Racing in Nineteenth Century France took three forms: flat racing, obstacle races (which increasingly became steeplechases), and trotting. Degas' art provides snapshot views of the former two.

Obstacle or "cross country" races imported from Britain proved too freewheeling and dangerous for the French. They were soon overtaken by the more systematic, though still perilous, steeplechase. Spills and even fatal falls were commonplace among riders, particularly in the early going when they tended to be "gentlemen," rather than professionals.

Not long after 1863, when a national steeplechase organization was founded to organize and promote the sport, Degas began work on a major painting immortalizing the increasingly fashionable competitions. Seeking to attract attention at the annual Paris Salon, Degas decided to leave the conventions of sporting art behind and create a fresh, compelling image. His efforts were reflected in numerous sketches of horses and riders he executed preparatory to composing what he felt would be an eye-catching canvas.

In the resulting, huge painting, he depicted a scene immediately after a horse had thrown its rider in the midst of a race. In "Scene from the Steeplechase: The Fallen Jockey," the riderless horse gallops to freedom but it is unclear whether the inert rider on the ground is dead or alive.

Appropriately, this enormous, show-stopping canvas was loaned by Virginia hunt country squire and premier National Gallery benefactor Paul Mellon. He also lent many of the rare wax sculptures on view in the exhibition.

For some reason, for all its size, boldness and interesting subject, "The Fallen Jockey" failed to cause a stir when displayed in Paris. One critic wrote, however, that "Like this jockey, the painter does not yet know his mount perfectly." Decades later, acknowledging the accuracy of the critique, Degas admitted that when he painted the work "I was totally ignorant of the mechanism that regulates a horse's movement."

Demonstrating his dissatisfaction with the original picture, he repainted it twice, in the early 1880s and again around 1897, by which time he was much more familiar with the subject matter. Discouraged by this early criticism with regard to steeplechasing, he turned his attention to other forms of racing.

"The Carriage Leaving the Races in the Countryside (Carriage at the Races)" (1869-1872), records a family outing of Degas' friends the Valpincons to the race course at Argentan in Normandy. The bright, spacious skies, refreshment tents and relaxed, bucolic atmosphere suggest an idyllic sojourn at the country races. "The horse becomes the quintessential symbol of leisure," observes Boggs in the exhibition catalogue, "for man if not the animal."

Thereafter, Degas devoted most of his attention to flat racing at busy Longchamp. Sketch after sketch shows his intense studies of the grandstand, jockeys and attendees, as well as the racing steeds themselves.

Degas did a series of drawings of what the French called "lads" - grooms or trainers who serviced horses. "Two Studies of a Groom" (circa 1878) show them to be middled-aged, experienced, hardy men in serviceable clothes, albeit with jaunty bowler hats indicating their roles at the track.

In "Jockey on a Rearing Horse" (circa 1890-1892), a chalk sketch, a small jockey labors to restrain his wildly tossing mount. By this time degas had benefited from study of the pioneering stop motion photographs of Englishman Eadward Muybridge, whose images of horses in action were published in Paris in the 1870s.

Degas also studied spectators at the track, whether nattily-dressed swells or fashionably-garbed ladies. "Three Women at the Races" (circa 1885), a handsome pastel, shows female fans absorbed in conversation, their fitted woolen coats contrasting with the background grass, which represents the unseen races they are attending.

Degas' studio was festooned with all manner of racing parapharnelia, including a full-sized dummy horse with a saddle on which he posed models. He also collected toy horses, created wax statuettes of horses and riders, and used wooden horses or chessmen to plan elaborate equestrian compositions. Such models, he said, were essential to his work. "You can't turn live horses around to get the proper effects of light," he explained.

Whereas his friend and fellow painter of modern French life Edouard Manet depicted race horses pounding down the stretch toward the viewer, Degas in the 1870s focused on the informal rituals before and after races at Longchamp. In "Racehorses at Longchamp" (1871; reworked in 1874?) Degas showed a group of jockeys with their mounts crossing an open field headed for the starting gate.

Degas' interest in the elegance of slender, impatient race horses, the bright silks of the riders and the animated bustle of grandstand crowds are reflected in "The False Start" (1869-1872). "The Parade (Racehorses before the Stands)" (1866-1872) offers a similar setting from a different point of view.

Degas undoubtedly witnessed American-style horse races during a visit to relatives in New Orleans in 1872-73. At the time the post-Civil War city had few amusements to offer, and its new race track opened that year near the house where Degas stayed.

Back in France in the 1880s and 1890s, Degas created some of his finest horse images. Around 1882 Degas executed three paintings entitled "Before the Race," each featuring a group of mounted jockeys on a rough grass paddock, caught in moments of accidental juxtapositions prior to the start of competition. Degas recorded a similar scene in pastel in "The Racecourse" (1885-1887). This is one of a number of stunning works in pastel, a medium he came to favor for its combination of color and line and the way it produced both softness and brilliance.

In a culminating masterwork, "Hacking to the Track" (circa 1892), Degas brought together elements from throughout his career: early studies of classical images, drawings of jockeys, understanding of horse and rider movements, and Muybridge's photographs. Strikingly posed against a line of trees, one senses the impending drama of the race. Experts have found sources for four of the horses in Muybridge's celebrated book of freeze-frame photos, "Animal Locomotion."

As the Nineteenth Century came to a close, Degas was plagued by failing eyesight that eventually left him virtually blind. Increasingly lonely and isolated, he rarely if ever visited race courses, basing his pastels of horses and jockeys on earlier sketchings and paintings, plus photographs and models in his studio.

Nevertheless, brilliant, vaporous pastel colors enliven "Racehorses in a Landscape" (1894), a wonderful work, in which a congregation of horses and riders are almost swallowed up by the vast setting, and "Racehorses" (1895-1900) a boldly-hued close up of a tight jumble of jockeys and mounts of shimmering green grass.

Thoughts of the track were never far from the mind of the aging artist. When one of his early ballet pictures sold for the highest price of any work by a living artist at auction, netting the dealer a handsome profit, Degas said he felt like "the horse who won the race, but got no larger ration of oats for his victory."

By the dawn of the Twentieth Century, France had a full-scale racing season, on numerous tracks through the country, that attracted large and enthusiastic crowds from all over Europe and America. Thanks in part to Degas' great equine art, "After more than a century under the shadow of English influence, horse racing had become a truly French tradition," observes Jones.

By the time the enfeebled Degas died in 1917, he had succeeded in immortalizing in art the spectacle of horse and riders at the track that had so intrigued him for years. "He had already sent his horses and jockeys to their own painted paradise," concludes Boggs.