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Lot Essay
Other casts of the present sculpture can be found in public institutions including: The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Norton Simon Art Foundation, Pasadena; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museo de Arte de São Paolo Assis Chateaubriand; Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Musée d'Orsay, Paris; Toledo Museum of Art; Fridart Foundation, Amsterdam.
“Happy sculptor… but I have not yet made enough horses!” Degas penned, exhilarated, to his friend and fellow sculptor Albert Bartholomé in 1888, around the same time that he created this dramatic, dynamic statuette (quoted in J.S. Boggs, Degas at the Races, exh. cat., Washington, D.C., 1998, p. 197). A passionate habitué of the racetrack at Longchamps since the early 1860s, Degas sketched and painted horses and jockeys as a signature genre in his art. Rearing horses similar to Cheval se cabrant first appeared on pages in the artist’s early notebooks, circa 1855-1856, based on old master subjects he had been studying. He thereafter made studies directly from observing horses in motion at the track, and as late as the mid-1890s, drawn from the sculpture itself.
During the 1880s, the period of his most sustained engagement with equine imagery, Degas began to sculpt horses in wax using a complex, well-articulated inner armature that allowed for a wider experimentation with difficult to capture, action poses: trotting, prancing, galloping, balking, and rearing. “Four-legged ballerinas dancing en pointe outdoors,” the poet Paul Valéry described these astutely observant investigations of horse gaits, likening them to Degas’s contemporaneous studies of his best-known, most popular theme (quoted in S. Lindsay, D.S. Barbour, and S.G. Sturman, op. cit., 2010, p. 64). Cheval se cabrant connotes a narrative moment that demonstrates Degas’ mastery at capturing tension and motion within a static form. “This horse’s head is more finely rendered and more expressively satisfying than any other by Degas,” Gary Tinterow has written of Cheval se cabrant. “Its nostrils flare and the right eye bulges as if in fright” (quoted in S. Campbell, R. Kendall, D.S. Barbour and S.G. Sturman,op. cit., 2009, p. 253).
The expressive quality of Cheval se cabrant, with its wild, protruding eye and flexed, recoiling neck, has prompted varied responses from commentators. Paul-André Lemoisne postulated that the horse may be the gored mount of a picador (“Les statuettes de Degas”, Art et Décoration, Paris, 1919, p. 11). Giorgio Cortenova and Ettore Camesasca have proposed that the horse is rearing to avoid the bite of an opponent (Degas Scultore, exh. cat., Milan, 1989, p. 174). Jean Sutherland Boggs suggested a deeper, metaphorical significance in Cheval se cabrant: “Degas had been fascinated not only with the concept of the horse’s search for freedom but with his own sympathy with the animal. His finest expression of the horse’s desire to escape the civilizing by man is the work of sculpture, Cheval se cabrant. To Degas, who had always admired determination in his dancers, as well as horses and riders, it is a symbol of the courage of self-will” (exh. cat., op. cit., 1998, p. 168). S.I. Newhouse purchased Degas’ Cheval se cabrant after visiting Lucian Freud’s home and seeing another version of the sculpture.
“Happy sculptor… but I have not yet made enough horses!” Degas penned, exhilarated, to his friend and fellow sculptor Albert Bartholomé in 1888, around the same time that he created this dramatic, dynamic statuette (quoted in J.S. Boggs, Degas at the Races, exh. cat., Washington, D.C., 1998, p. 197). A passionate habitué of the racetrack at Longchamps since the early 1860s, Degas sketched and painted horses and jockeys as a signature genre in his art. Rearing horses similar to Cheval se cabrant first appeared on pages in the artist’s early notebooks, circa 1855-1856, based on old master subjects he had been studying. He thereafter made studies directly from observing horses in motion at the track, and as late as the mid-1890s, drawn from the sculpture itself.
During the 1880s, the period of his most sustained engagement with equine imagery, Degas began to sculpt horses in wax using a complex, well-articulated inner armature that allowed for a wider experimentation with difficult to capture, action poses: trotting, prancing, galloping, balking, and rearing. “Four-legged ballerinas dancing en pointe outdoors,” the poet Paul Valéry described these astutely observant investigations of horse gaits, likening them to Degas’s contemporaneous studies of his best-known, most popular theme (quoted in S. Lindsay, D.S. Barbour, and S.G. Sturman, op. cit., 2010, p. 64). Cheval se cabrant connotes a narrative moment that demonstrates Degas’ mastery at capturing tension and motion within a static form. “This horse’s head is more finely rendered and more expressively satisfying than any other by Degas,” Gary Tinterow has written of Cheval se cabrant. “Its nostrils flare and the right eye bulges as if in fright” (quoted in S. Campbell, R. Kendall, D.S. Barbour and S.G. Sturman,op. cit., 2009, p. 253).
The expressive quality of Cheval se cabrant, with its wild, protruding eye and flexed, recoiling neck, has prompted varied responses from commentators. Paul-André Lemoisne postulated that the horse may be the gored mount of a picador (“Les statuettes de Degas”, Art et Décoration, Paris, 1919, p. 11). Giorgio Cortenova and Ettore Camesasca have proposed that the horse is rearing to avoid the bite of an opponent (Degas Scultore, exh. cat., Milan, 1989, p. 174). Jean Sutherland Boggs suggested a deeper, metaphorical significance in Cheval se cabrant: “Degas had been fascinated not only with the concept of the horse’s search for freedom but with his own sympathy with the animal. His finest expression of the horse’s desire to escape the civilizing by man is the work of sculpture, Cheval se cabrant. To Degas, who had always admired determination in his dancers, as well as horses and riders, it is a symbol of the courage of self-will” (exh. cat., op. cit., 1998, p. 168). S.I. Newhouse purchased Degas’ Cheval se cabrant after visiting Lucian Freud’s home and seeing another version of the sculpture.