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Edgar Degas

1834–1917

Two Jockeys

c. 1868–1870

Gouache and oil on light brown paper

238 × 311 mm

Stamped (lower left): “Degas” (L.658)

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Provenance:

Estate of the artist

Sale at Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, Atelier Edgar Degas, 3ème vente, 2–4 July 1919, lot 141

Sale at Hôtel Drouot, Paris, Catalogue des estampes, aquarelles, dessins, pastels, 9 December 1920, lot 180, as Deux études de Jockey

Georges Vaudoyer (1877–1947) Collection, Paris

Walter Feilchenfeldt, Zurich

Private collection, acquired from the above in 1981

Sale at Sotheby’s, New York, The Line of Beauty: Drawings from the Collection of Howard and Saretta Barnet, 31 January 2018, lot 25

Private collection

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Literature:

Paul-André Lemoisne, Degas et son œuvre, Paris, 1946, vol. II, p. 77, no. 153.

Important XIX & XX Century Works of Paper, exh. cat., London, 1977, no. 8.

Jean Sutherland Boggs, Degas at the Races, exh. cat., Washington, D.C., 1998, no. 45.

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Exhibited:

London, The Lefevre Gallery, Important XIX & XX Century Works of Paper, 31 March–14 May 1977..

Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Degas at the Races, 12 April–12 June 1998.

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A passionate observer of modern life, Degas devoted much of his career to two closely related themes: ballet dancers and horse racing. While scenes from the turf appear intermittently in his work of the 1860s and 1870s, he returned to them with increasing frequency from the following decade onwards, responding in part to growing interest among collectors and dealers. In approaching this subject, Degas aligned himself with the 19th-century tradition of equestrian painting associated with Théodore Géricault, Eugène Delacroix, and Alfred de Dreux, as well as with contemporaries such as Édouard Manet and Henri de Toulouse Lautrec. His attention, however, was directed less towards the spectacle of the race itself than to the marginal moments before and after it, when bodies relax, shift, and regroup.

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Our sheet belongs to an important group of mixed-media drawings executed around 1868 to 1870, in which Degas explored the figure of the jockey from multiple viewpoints. In several related works, the same rider appears repeated within a single composition, tested through successive poses. Jean Sutherland Boggs, writing about the series, remarked that the light dissolves the second jockey so that only rudimentary yet highly graphic lines remain, while the foremost figure is constructed through constantly revised contours left visible on the surface, as if vibrating in space. Of the 13 drawings in this series, only one has been identified as preparatory for a painting. They were therefore conceived as autonomous works, although the pose of our jockey bending over the horse’s neck seems to have inspired the depiction of the rider dressed in yellow in the painting At the Races: Before the Start (fig. 1), held at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and probably painted in the late 1890s. The parallel often drawn between Degas’ dancers and his riders is particularly apt in our depiction of Two Jockeys. Just as he habitually represented ballerinas during rehearsals or moments of rest, so too our jockeys are depicted in transitional states, absorbed in preparation before the start of the race.

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