E dgar Degas was born in 1834, a t.mes when the French public found itself in the grips of a fascination with horse racing which would only grow as the century progressed. A member of the prestigious Jockey-Club de Paris, Degas, like many members of the haute-bourgeoisie, was a habitué of the racecourses at Deauville and Longchamp, where he could study the beauty of the lean, sinewy thoroughbreds at close quarters. Fascinated by their agility and emotion, Degas’ representations of horses suspended in movement represent some of his greatest achievements of his career as both a draughtsman and sculptor.

Degas’ initial foray into the equine subject came in 1855 when he was accepted to Paris’ École des Beaux-Arts as a student of Louis Lamothe. The young artist flourished under Lamothe’s tutelage, and later that year, he joined his teacher in Lyons where Lamothe was working with his own mentor, Hippolyte Flandrin. As was common to proprietors of a classical artistic education, both Lamothe and Flandrin encouraged Degas to study the art of antiquity, placing particular importance on the human and equine figures composing the Parthenon frieze. While the reliefs of the frieze are restricted spatially and compositionally, this exercise helped Degas to become acquainted with the anatomical details of the horse’s physique, details he refined and mastered over the next sixty years.

Cheval au trot, les pieds ne touchant pas le sol illustrates the twofocat action which defines the trot as a gait, the horse’s legs moving in diagonal pairs (front right with rear left; front left with rear right). The wax original was modeled somet.mes in the 1870s, during which t.mes Degas encountered the work of Eadweard Muybridge, whose locomotion studies of bodies in motion “permitted the careful dissection of sequences the human eye experiences more conceptually than perceptually… [in order to unveil] the secrets of the body's habits, a project that naturally appealed to Degas, who wanted to expose the very memory of muscle as it performs endless repetitions of motion” (Elizabeth C. Childs, “Habits of the Eye: Degas, Photography, and Modes of Vision,” The Artist and the Camera: Degas to Picasso, New Haven & London, 2000, p. 75).

In 1871, a debate arose between Leland Stanford, president of the Central Pacific Railroad, and Robert Bonner, owner of the New York Ledger, who disagreed over whether a trotting horse ever had all four feet simultaneously suspended in midair. Muyridge’s locomotion study of the trot definitively settled the argument, confirming that in certain phases of the gait, there is indeed an instance where the horse’s feet do not touch the ground. While Cheval au trot, les pieds ne touchant pas le sol corresponds to phase 12 of Muybridge’s A Horse Trotting (fig. 3), scholars disagree as to whether its publication specifically precipitated Degas’ engagement with the idea. Artists had in fact been depicting the suspended moment for over a century, with examples corresponding to the increase in representations of horses performing a more sporting type of trot, fluid and extended, as opposed to the formal postures of the stately piaffe or passage common to earlier equestrian portraits.

That said, only two of Degas’ extant equine figures portray the horse with all four of its feet off the ground: Cheval au galop tournant la tête à droite avec son jockey and the present work. This represents a departure from the artist’s historical interest in gravity and its grounding effect on bodies in space, something he explored not only though equestrian subjects, but also in his work with the dancers of the Paris Opéra Ballet. In this vein, Cheval au galop sur le pied droit offers a fruitful comparison to the present sculpture: rather than evoking a sense of sprightly buoyancy, by grounding the horse’s weight in its hind legs, the thundering of its hooves can almost be heard hitting the ground as it outstretches its front leg in a right lead gallop (fig. 4).

This cast of Cheval au trot, les pieds ne touchant pas le sol was acquired by the present owner at an auction benefiting the Dallas Museum of Replica Handbags s on 20 May 1978, where it was reproduced on the cover of the catalogue. The auction contained 32 items donated by galleries and individuals, of which the Degas was lot 15, featured “in cooperation with E.V. Thaw.” Held at the newly opened Hyatt Regency Hotel in Dallas, the auction and corresponding ball raised $254,000 for the museum. It has remained in private hands for over forty years.