Title: Trabendes Pferd
Date: 1881
Dimensions: 22 cm
Genre: Sculpture
Year of acquisition: 1926
Whereabouts: Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main
Medium: Bronze
Museum director at time of acquisition: Georg Swarzenski
Alfred Flechtheim and Edgar Degas
The French painter and sculptor Edgar Degas exhibited together with contemporary Impressionist artists. However, his works differ as a result of the delicate use of lines and their precisely structured pictorial composition. His career as an artist after breaking off his studies at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts was primarily marked by trips to Italy and the USA, as well as the intensive study and copying of works by major artists in local museums. During this time he met Eduard Manet and later became acquainted with Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and other contemporaries such as Émile Zola. His favourite subject was the portrait that followed a brief period working in the style of history painters. He focused on subjects such as Parisian nightlife, ballet, horse-racing and women, capturing the latter grooming themselves or at work. Apart from oil paintings he also created numerous works in pastel chalk, drawings and, particularly late in life, sculptures, as he found these easier to make in the face of his worsening blindness. Works by Degas were shown at annual exhibitions of works by the Impressionists and at the Paris Salon.
Degas’ works were frequently included in solo and group exhibitions at Flechtheim’s galleries. He was principally backed by the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. An exhibition of his sculptures was held in 1926 in Flechtheim’s gallery in Berlin. This was then shown at the Galerie Thannhauser in Munich and the Galerie Arnold in Dresden.
Degas’ open anti-Semitism, that ultimately led to the artist’s isolation when he was old, did not seem to have played a role later, either with regard to the interest Flechtheim showed for his work or the confiscation at a later date of various works by Degas by the National Socialists.
Description
Degas gestaltet das trabende Pferd in einer beinah impressionistischen Weise: Merkmale werden als generelle Linie umrissen. Das Temperament des Tieres wird durch sein erhobenes Haupt und das geöffnete Maul sichtbar. Die kontrollierte Bewegung des Trabs halten es jedoch zurück. Die ungeglättete Oberflächenbeschaffenheit unterstützt den Eindruck der Unruhe. Der postume Guß ist nach einer Wachsplastik entstanden, zu der Degas von einer Photographie von Eadweard Muybridge inspiriert wurde. Dessen Aufnahme "Der Trab", 12. Phase, wurde am 27.9.1881 im "Le Globe" veröffentlicht.
Bibliography
Das plastische Werk von Edgar Degas, Ausst.Kat. Galerie Flechtheim Berlin, Galerie Thannhauser München, Galerie Arnold Dresden (Veröffentlichungen des Kunstarchivs 9), Berlin 1926, Kat. Nr. 51. Edgar Degas Pferdebronzen, Ausst.Kat. Galerie Alfred Flechtheim Düsseldorf 1927, Kat. Nr. 13. Richard Hamann: Tierplastik im Wandel der Zeiten, Marburg 1949, S. 13, Abb. 88. Leonard von Matt, John Rewald: Degas. Das plastische Werk, Zürich 1957, S. 146, Tafel 13, 20, 21. The complete sculptures of Degas, Ausst.-Kat. The Lefevre Gallery London, London 1976, S. 16. Eugénie de Keyser: Degas. Réalité et métaphore. (Publications d'Histoire de l'Art et d'Archéologie de l'Université catholique de Louvain 25), Louvain-Le Neuve 1981, S. 85. Degas: Scultore, hg. v. Nadine Bortolotti, Ausst.-Kat. Centro Mostre Florenz, Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Verona, Museo di Villa Croce Genua, Mailand 1986, S. 198f. Alfred Flechtheim, Sammler, Kunsthändler, Verleger : 1937, Europa vor dem 2. Weltkrieg, hg. v. Hans Albert Peters und Stephan von Wiese, Ausst.- Kat. Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf / Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte Münster, Düsseldorf 1987, S. 243, Abb. Nr. 28. The Sculpture of Edgar Degas, hg. v. Mordechai Omer, Ausst.-Kat. Tel Aviv Museum of Modern Art, Tel Aviv 2010, S. 54. Max Liebermann und Frankreich, hg. v. Martin Faass, Ausst. Kat. Liebermann-Villa am Wannsee, Petersberg 2013, S. 107 Abb. 36.
