PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF SHEPARD KOGAN
Lot 18
EDGAR DEGAS(1834-1917)Amazone et Cavalier
6 December 2022, 14:00 EST
New YorkSold for US$28,050 inc. premium
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EDGAR DEGAS (1834-1917)
Amazone et Cavalier
contre-épreuve in pastel and charcoal on paper
image size: 10 3/16 x 7 13/16 in (25.8 x 19.9 cm)
sheet size: 12 3/8 x 9 13/16 in (31.5 x 25 cm)
Executed circa 1881-1885
contre-épreuve in pastel and charcoal on paper
image size: 10 3/16 x 7 13/16 in (25.8 x 19.9 cm)
sheet size: 12 3/8 x 9 13/16 in (31.5 x 25 cm)
Executed circa 1881-1885
Footnotes
The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Galerie Brame & Lorenceau.
Provenance
Baron Louis de Chollet Collection, Fribourg (by 1968).
Thence by descent; their sale, Christie's, New York, November 15, 1990, lot 108.
Galerie Felix Vercel, New York (acquired at the above sale).
Acquired from the above by the present owner in November 1991.
Exhibited
Bern, Berner Kunstmuseum, Degas à Berne, November 25, 1951 - January 13, 1952, no. 99 (later traveled to Amsterdam).
Fribourg, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, De Lautrec à Mathieu, Dessins, aquarelles, gouaches, July 28 – September 29, 1968, no. 115.
New York, Wildenstein & Co., Inc., 'Degas' Racing World,' A loan exhibition for the Benefit of The National Museum of Racing, Saratoga, March 21 – April 27, 1968, no. 47.
Edgar Degas was both deeply wedded to tradition and in love with experimentation and new technology, using innovative techniques to create transfer lithographs, monotypes and counterproofs.
In the late 1800s, printmaking captured the attention of many artists, and led to experiments with myriad possibilities of reproduction. The present work is a counterproof, a type of print that produces a soft imprint of an initial copy that he would then heighten with pastel. The evanescent outline of the riders in the present work, creates a feeling that one is observing or remembering the scene rather than taking part in it. This misty quality is deliberately vague, an intentional effect generated by the counter-proofing technique. Rather than reapplying a medium to the plate, the artist would pass it through the press again, and any remaining pigment would create an impression of the original effect. Degas would then use pastels to heighten the colors of the imprint, leaving some lines and brightening select areas.
Many of Degas's drawings and sculptures of horses evince the artist's particularly close study of the pioneering stop-motion photographs of Eadweard Muybridge who, from around 1872 onwards, had begun photographing horses in motion. Degas is known to have made several drawings and pastels after individual photographs from Muybridge's Animal Locomotion, and these drawings he often counterproofed so as to be able to record the horse's position from both sides.
The first recorded owner of the present work was Baron Louis de Chollet, a prominent Swiss collector and member of a notable Fribourg family, whose collection also included works by Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso, Alfred Sisley and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.