1892
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
The Jockey is a 1892 by Edgar Degas, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a single jockey bent low over a galloping horse, its legs blurred mid-stride. Degas drew this as a study—tiny adjustments to the horse’s jaw, tail, and hooves mattered more than the final color. He cared about the exact moment the animal’s muscles tensed, not the race itself. Look up other horse studies by Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917) to see how he built the same scene in pastel.
A study made for a larger racetrack composition rendered in pastel, Degas’s Jockey shows the attention that the artist lavished on perfecting the positions of the horse’s legs, hoofs, jaw straining against the bit, and the swish of the tail.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas on 19 July 1834 in Paris, Edgar Degas came from an affluent banking family with aristocratic roots and spent his childhood among the cultivated circles of the French capital.
See the richer artist page
