Description
Year of creation: 1866
Original size: 152 cm x 180 cm
Painting style: Impressionism
Original technique: Oil on canvas
Located: National Gallery of Art, Washington (inv. 1999.79.10)
Scene from the Steeplechase: The Fallen Jockey – Edgar Degas
At the lower right a jockey lies on his back in the grass, arms spread and head thrown back. He wears a pink shirt, a dark jacket, light breeches and high black boots. There is no one around him to help, and that emptiness is the first thing a viewer notices. Our hand-painted canvas painting keeps the silence of the large format.
The riderless horse
Above the fallen man a brown horse rises in a wide arc without its rider. The tail streams, the saddle is empty, the stirrups hang at the flank, and one foreleg is stretched over the lying body. The leap is painted so that its end is not shown – we do not know whether the horse will clear the man or not. Degas holds that moment instead of resolving it.
Two riders still coming
At the left, behind, two more riders approach, one in a red cap and bearded, the other in a white cap and a bluish jacket. They are far enough away that help is not yet possible and close enough that the scene is unmistakably a race and not a solitary accident. The same race before the start is shown by the Gentlemen’s Race, and what happens immediately before the running by Before the Race.
Emptiness instead of a background
The background is reduced to a pale sky, a row of small trees and a green plain without detail. The canvas measures 152 x 180 cm, a large format for Degas, and it is the size that makes the emptiness audible. The painter returned to this canvas over several decades and reworked it again in his late years; it is today in the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Our version
Our version is a hand-painted oil painting on canvas. Every canvas is painted individually, in the size and frame you choose. The painter works from the original with brush and oils, so the strokes and the layering stay visible – the part a print cannot reproduce.
