Edgar Degas (1834-1917)

Cheval faisant une descente de main, one of Degas' most popular sculptures, is cast from one of the fifteen equine statues that Degas modeled in wax. He executed drawings and wax figures as studies in movement and kept them in his studio as he completed his paintings of racing scenes. Manipulating the highly pliable wax over improvised armatures, Degas explored the movements of horses while pursuing the same theme with his modeled dancing figures. Commenting on Degas's use of these drawings and sculptures, Anne Dumas writes, "Degas was obsessed, above all, with the figure, with movement and pose. Drawing for him was a way of discovering and capturing motion and posture. His sculpture can perhaps be seen as an extension to drawing, a means by which Degas could work through his ideas in a direct, tactile and three-dimensional form, and a fresh arena in which to work out problems. Like his printmaking, sculpture was a particularly experimental form" (quoted in J.S. Czestochowski and A. Pingeot, eds., op. cit., p. 40). Degas was so absorbed by these equine figures that in 1888 he gave them priority over his series of pastel bathers, writing to Albert Bartholomé, "I have not yet made enough horses. The women must wait in their basins" (quoted in J.S. Boggs, Degas at the Races, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1998, p. 197).
In his bronze horses, Degas defies the static posture and severe realism of the equine sculptures created by contemporary academic artists. Movement and drama are conveyed in the present work through the balking horse's head, lowered to the side and mouth open, straining against an imaginary jockey. In the next moment the horse's head will swing up in a full rear. Degas' equine sculptures relate to his studies of the ballerina, both illustrating his endless fascination with capturing movement. The balletic quality of Cheval faisant une descente de main, moreover, reflects Paul Valéry's assertion that his horses were four-legged ballerinas, dancing en pointe outdoors (see S.G. Lindsay, D.S. Barbour and S.G. Sturman, op. cit., p. 64).