Edgar Degas

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Edgar Degas
1834-1917
Group of Four Jockeys
1868, reworked ca. 1878
Graphite on translucent paper mounted on board.
15 7/8 x 15 inches (403 x 380 mm)
Thaw Collection.
2010.118
Provenance: 
Fourth Degas atelier sale (Lugt 658); Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 2-4 July 1919, III, p. 154, no. 178a, repr.; Lord Howard de Walden, London; sale, Sotheby's, London, 22 April 1971, lot 26; Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw, New York.
Bibliography: 

The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY, "Drawn to Greatness: Master Drawings from the Thaw Collection", 2017. Exh. cat., no. 84, repr.
Stampfle, Felice, and Cara D. Denison. Drawings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene V. Thaw. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1975, no. 96.
100 Master drawings from the Morgan Library & Museum. München : Hirmer, 2008, no. 87, repr. [Jennifer Tonkovich]

Notes: 

This sheet provides an exceptional example of how Degas worked, reworked, and revised a particular scene over a span of years. Drawn on tracing paper, these studies were originally made in connection with his painting Racecourse Scene (1868; Weil Brothers-Cotton Inc., Montgomery, Alabama). Degas revisited the composition--and this sheet-- a decade later in preparation for the painting Jockeys Before the Start (Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham). In reworking the composition, he focused his attention, and his pencil, on the horse and rider at center. -- Exhibition Label, from "Drawn to Greatness: Master Drawings from the Thaw Collection"

Associated names: 

Howard de Walden, Thomas Evelyn Scott-Ellis, Baron, 1880-1946, former owner.
Thaw, Eugene Victor, former owner.
Thaw, Clare, former owner.

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