Finally, in The Fallen Jockey (1896-1898) Degas returns to the subject matter of the rider-less horse and fallen jockey he first painted, but this time he isolates the troubled interaction between horse and jockey to a single pair. This intensity of focus makes it even more apparent that he believed it was actually the horse that controlled man, a belief that prior to The Fallen Jockey he had revealed more subtly in his depictions of the relationship between horse and jockey. This late Degas work completely debunks Boggs’ contention of diminishing autonomy as it explicitly depicts the horse as uncontrollable to man. In The Fallen Jockey, Degas depicts a single victorious horse who has managed to shed the burden of his jockey and to escape. The determination reflected in the powerful animal’s eyes and legs make it clear that he has finally achieved what he has sought after for so long: freedom. The hapless jockey, meanwhile, lies immobile on the ground, leaving the viewer to wonder whether he is alive or dead. The interaction between horse and jockey, or lack thereof, is definitive in proving two things: one, that Degas saw the horse as superior to man because it was a legendary creature, and therefore believed that it was uncontrollable to a mere man and two, that this belief only increased as he progressed as a painter. In The Fallen Jockey, there is one clear victor: the horse gallops away to freedom, leaving his servitude to the jockey behind. The critic Jean Sutherland Boggs was dissatisfied with this work, as she felt it did not fit in the context of Degas later, and more pleasant, racing scenes. She said, “The Fallen Jockey is startling because it would have seemed so new- in spirit almost diabolic, in language so stark and so daring” (qtd. Boggs, 165). Boggs is definitive in her assertion : according to her, The Fallen Jockey was a “diabolic” anomaly. Yet in considering the interaction between horse and rider in all of Degas previous paintings, it is clear that this painting is not “new” at all, but rather the climax of the increasing lack of control evident in all of Degas’ paintings of horses and jockeys. As Degas matured, he gained more and more respect for the power of the horse and realized exactly how uncontrollable it was. He also grew to resent the exploitation of the horse on the racetrack, and he uses the troubled interaction in his paintings to express his displeasure with this exploitation.
Images:
Degas, Edgar. The False Start, 1869-1872. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut.