Pictures of the Month | March 2010
Picture of the Month
March 2010
Jockeys Before the Race 1878/9
Edgar Degas (1834-1917)
In the month that sees the Cheltenham Festival, we are taking a closer look at one of the Barber Institute’s most striking and important pictures, Jockeys Before the Race, by the French artist, Edgar Degas.
Degas came from a wealthy Parisian family and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts under a pupil of Ingres, whom he greatly admired. Indeed, his early work suggested that he would become an academic painter in the Ingres tradition. But, by the late 1860s, he had begun to develop an interest in modern subject matter that he shared with contemporaries such as Manet, Renoir and Monet, often depicting the middle-classes at leisure.
He became a member of the circle surrounding Manet, and between 1874 and 1886 he took part in seven of the Impressionist exhibitions. However, Degas disliked the term ‘Impressionist’, considering himself to be a ‘Realist’ or ‘Naturalist’ painter interested in shape, composition and the portrayal of movement. This becomes evident through his repeated and varied depictions of a restricted range of themes, including ballerinas and horses.
Jockeys Before the Race, executed in about 1878 and shown at the Fourth Impressionist Exhibition of 1879, illustrates these interests. Breaking all the rules of classical composition, Degas placed a pole in the foreground that runs from the top to the bottom of the picture, dividing it vertically and
slicing through the head of the nearest horse. Yet, rather than being intrusive, the pole contributes to the picture by acting as a focal point to help the viewer make sense of the picture space. It is balanced by the line of the horizon and areas of strong colour such as the brilliant white shirt of the nearest jockey, the jade-green grass, the red cap of the second jockey and the strategically placed sun in the top, left-hand corner of the hazy, pink winter sky. Many of Degas’s compositional ideas were taken from Japanese prints, which were popular at this time, and the ‘frozen-in-time’ look of photography, which was still new in the late nineteenth century.
However, as with much of Degas’s work, Jockeys Before the Race is not as spontaneous as it at first appears. Instead, it would have been painstakingly executed in his studio, where he experimented with new techniques and media. Jockeys Before the Race, for example, is painted on paper in essence – oil paint that has been thinned with turpentine to achieve a dry, eggshell-like effect – as well as bodycolour and pastel.
Degas’s paintings and sculpture have never been universally popular. Jockeys Before the Race was caricatured in the satirical magazine Punch soon after it went on display in 1879. In fact, even today, as well as being one of the most highly regarded pictures in the Barber, it is also disliked by some visitors, who do not appreciate Degas’s subversive approach to composition.
Ingres’s Paolo and Francesca is currently on display in the Blue Gallery. It will be the focus of a free Lunchtime Gallery Talk on Thursday, 18 March at 1.30 pm.
Andrew Davies, Press and Marketing Officer
| What is your favourite work of art in the Barber Institute galleries? Drop us a line at info@barber.org.uk and let us know, and we could feature your choice in a future Picture of the Month. |