Rearing Horse

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Rearing Horse

Artist Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917)

Place of OriginFrance

DateWax figure: 1880s; Bronze cast: 1919-1921

Dimensions12 1/4 × 7 1/2 × 10 1/4 in. (31.1 × 19.1 × 26 cm)

MediumBronze

ClassificationSculpture

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number

1952.70

Not on View

Label TextPrecariously 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.Published ReferencesLee, Katharine C., "French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism," Toledo Museum News, vol. 12, no. 3, Autumn 1969, repr. p. 77.

Barron, Stephanie, "Edgar Degas: Rearing Horse," Toledo Museum News, New Series, vol. 17, no. 3, 1974, pp. 56-58, repr. p. 57 and on cover (col.).

Campbell, Sara, "A Catalogue of Degas' Bronzes," Apollo, vol. 142, no. 402, Aug. 1995, p. 13.

Czestochowski, Joseph S. and Anne Pingeot, Degas Sculptures: Catalogue Raisonne of the Bronzes, Memphis, International Arts, 2002, p. 129.

Exhibition HistoryBerne, Kunstmuseum, 1951, no. 194, repr.

London, Alex Reid & Lefevre, 1952.

Detroit Institute of Arts, The Two Sides of the Medal, French Painting from Gérôme to Gauguin, 1954, no. 142.

Pittsburgh, Carnegie Museum of Art; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Kansas City, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; Saint Louis Art Museum; Toledo Museum of Art, Impressionism: Selections from Five American Museums, 1989-1990, no. 25, p. 72, repr. (col.).

Cleveland Museum of Art, Time Stands Still: Muybridge and the Instantaneous Photography Movement, 2004.

Tampa Museum of Art (FL), Degas: Form, Movement and the Antique, March 12-June 19, 2011.

Toledo Museum of Art, Degas and the Dance, October 15, 2015-January 10, 2016.

Comparative ReferencesRewald, J., Degas Works in Sculpture, New York 1944, XIII (4 plates - pp 48, 49, 50, 51 - not from ours) Hèbrard catalogue, bronze #4, Letter Q. See also Millard, Charles, The Sculpture of Edgar Degas, Princeton, 1976, pp. 23, 100. See also Millard, Charles W., In the Romantics to Rodin, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1980, no. 107, p. 231. See also Rewald, John, Degas's Complete Sculpture, Catalogue Raisonné, New Edition, San Francisco, 1990, no. XIII. See also Luchs, Allison, "The Degas Waxes," in Art for the Nation, National Gallery of Art, Washington D. C., 1991, pp. 178-181, 186-192. See also Pingeot, Anne, Degas Sculptures, Paris, 1991, no. 44.