Rich with atmospheric intensity, Les Entraîneurs is an exceptional rendition of one of Edgar Degas’ greatest subjects. Executed circa 1892-94, the present work belongs to a group of three similar friezelike pastels executed in the early 1890s. Other works of this period and medium are part of prestigious international museum collects ions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Kunsthaus Zürich; and the Pushkin Museum, Moscow.

Although the artist was not an active participant himself, Degas was engrossed with the popular past.mes of equestrian sports. A documentarist of modern life and a technician of visual imagery, Degas was an habitué of the racecourses at Deauville and Longchamps, where he could study the beauty of thoroughbred horses at close quarters. Although Degas rendered this subject matter occasionally throughout the 1860s and 70s, Les entraîneurs dates to the period beginning in the 1880s in which Degas drastically increased his output of equestrian scenes in response to market demand.

Degas’ exploration of this world thus occurred in tandem with his survey of the realm of dance, finding them analogous in terms of specialized training, repeated gestures, and codified movements. Art historian John Rewald expounds, “Unlike de Dreux and Gericault, both reportedly fine equestrians, Degas…had no taste for their energetic and romantic portrayals. The main reason that Degas repeated these representations of horses is identical to that for his other recurring subjects: he wanted to express in pictorial terms the shapes and motions of bodies engaged in the performance of habitual activity.” (Exh. Cat., National Gallery of Art, The John Hay Whitney collects ion, 1983, p. 40) (see fig. 1).

Les Entraîneurs is a superb study in the graceful rhythms of the riders and their mounts. The attitude and movement of each horse within its grouping responds to another, from the long neck of one animal with its head projected forward to the upright stance of another with its ears pricked upward. Each jockey’s pose on his mount is similarly in contrast and harmony. Articulating the act of horse trainers reining in and leading their animals, Degas conveys the valiant sportsmanship of these men whom he greatly admired.

A framework for myriad formal inventions, this composition quotes Degas’ lifelong study of Antiquities and Old Masters works. Degas frequently sketched copies of various masterworks at the onset of his career; the compositional choices present in this elongated canvas echo studies of the Parthenon friezes and Renaissance-era heroic equestrian procession paintings (see figs. 2 and 3). Although Degas predominantly employed the horizontal format of this frieze-like composition for studies of dance classes, it here serves to situate the viewer in the undulating hills, rushing sweeps of grass, and misty river that comprise the horses’ early morning environs.

Les Entraîneurs typifies Degas’ affinity for pastel, which increasingly became his preferred medium in later years. In his depictions of equestrian subjects as in his many scenes from the world of ballet and opera, Degas moved from the precise delineation of complex arrangements of figures in space to a much broader, more atmospheric approach. Contrasting with the clearly articulated forms in early equestrian scenes, such as Course de gentlemen. Avant le départ from 1863 (see fig. 4), the present work asserts a compositional dynamism over specificity of detail. Suffusing the landscape with subdued light, Degas masterfully articulates the nuances of the landscape all while conveying the horses’ powerful physiognomy and musculature. Art historian Gary Tinterow details the process by which Degas carefully executed his figures with this medium: "Degas constructed the pastels with the same methodical approach as for the oil paintings on panel. He drew each figure a number of t.mes s in order to refine precisely the action he wanted, and then transferred his figures—often by squaring—onto the support for the pastel" (Exh. Cat., Paris, Grand Palais (and traveling), Degas, 1988-89, p. 370). Les Entraîneurs underscores Degas’ unrivaled prowess among Impressionist artists to convey the immediacy and action of modern life through pastel.

Through his illustration of bucking and rearing horses, Degas evinces his superlative capacity to represent form in motion. Known for his excellent visual memory, Degas nonetheless saw the advantage of photographs upon which the artist could rely when lacking a model. The accurate representation of galloping horses in the middle ground of Les Entraîneurs cites the influence of remarkable photographic studies by Eadweard Muybridge, whose frame-by-frame images of horses mid-gallop provided Degas with a novel insight into the mechanics of movement for both sculptures and pastels of equine subjects beginning in the 1880s (see fig. 5).

Art historian Jean Sutherland Boggs expounds on the emotional tenor of Les Entraîneurs, writing, “Nostalgia and melancholy seem intensified in The Trainers. Degas, who had demonstrated his respect for trainers in his drawings in the mid-seventies, shows here, with beautiful pacing, his respect for the identification of the trainers with their horses as well as their sense of purpose. A trio in the background has been galloping and is now reining in the horses, whereas in the foreground another trio proceeds with its own quiet and natural dignity. In the early morning we sense the heavy dew…and see the mist rising heavily from the river. This is a convincing picture of such a landscape at that t.mes of the day and, even if it is in expectation of the morning, a certain melancholy invades it, enhanced by the grouping of the horses. Almost in the idle of the pastel, three draw up as if in anticipation of the necessity of assuming the dignity of the group…” (Exh. Cat., Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, Degas at the Races, 1998 p. 158-159)

The dating of Degas’ work presented numerous challenges to earlier historians—particularly as the artist so often repeated the same subjects throughout his career and often completed a work somet.mes s a decade or more after its inception. Although originally dated to the early 1880s, stylistic analysis, the significance of the very shape of the canvas, and references within the picture to Degas’ later fascination with photography, modern scholars now date the work to the 1890s.