Rearing Horse
Artist: Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917)
Date: Wax figure: 1880s; Bronze cast: 1919-1921
Dimensions:
12 1/4 × 7 1/2 × 10 1/4 in. (31.1 × 19.1 × 26 cm)
Medium: Bronze
Classification: Sculpture
Credit Line: Museum Purchase
Object number: 1952.70
Label Text:Precariously balanced on hind legs while throwing back its head, Edgar Degas’s Rearing Horse demonstrates the expressive and charged power of a racehorse. A painter and sculptor of 19th-century life, Degas spent hours at the Longchamp race track in Paris directly observing horseracing, which would become a signature subject in his body of work. If you look at the torso of Rearing Horse you can see how intentionally rough and uneven Degas left the surface, thus mirroring a real horse’s sinewy and contoured muscles. Degas sculpted Rearing Horse, like all of his sculptures, out of red wax; it wasn’t until after his death that the sculpture was cast in bronze.
Not on view
In Collection(s)