Les Jockeys. The Jockeys by Edgar Degas, 1834-1917

Edgar Degas, 1834-1917
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Les Jockeys. The Jockeys

Lithograph in colours prepared in the studio of Auguste Clot after the pastel by Degas. c.1908/10. With the signature in the stone. From the edition of c.150. Commissioned by Ambroise Vollard c.1908/10. Drawn on the stones and printed by Clot at his studio c.1908/10.

Excellent impression with very fresh colours. On beige toned light china paper. Excellent condition. (Note: the toning of the paper in the upper left appears in every impression and is a result of oil on the lithographic stone). Worked to the full sheet size, as issued. Sheet: 19 1/4 x 22 1/2 ins (490x570mm).

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During the 1870?s Degas? fascination with lithography as a medium, and with printmaking in general, had stimulated him to create some of the most beautiful and inspired graphic works of the late 19th century. In the 1890?s Ambroise Vollard, the Paris dealer and print enthusiast, was working on the production of his Albums des Peintres Graveurs, portfolios of prints created by leading painters. Vollard approached Degas to encourage him to work again in lithography to make a print for the third of these portfolios. Not least because Vollard particularly wanted a work using colour lithography, for which he had the greatest enthusiasm, but which Degas had never used preferring the tonalities and effects of monochrome black, but also because he felt his attentions had moved on to new ideas, he refused. However he did agree that Auguste Clot, the extraordinarily gifted lithographic colour printer with whom so many of his other artist friends had worked, should make a colour lithograph for him and derived from his famous painting of racehorse jockeys.

Clot was a lithographic printer who had an extraordinary understanding for every nuance of the aesthetic qualities of the medium, linked to a marvellous ability to align his thinking to that of the artist with whom he was working. The result, as for instance in the great colour lithographs of ?Les Baigneurs? by Cezanne, was the creation of outstanding works of graphic art. In ?the case of ?The Jockeys?, above, Clot prepared the stones so as to recapture the pastel effects of Degas?s drawing and even used a specially tinted paper (with deliberate variations in the tinting as in the upper left corner) to enhance that feeling. The result is a wonderful example of the creative qualities of the medium and a beautiful pictorial image, and one which received Degas? full approval.

In the end the portfolio for which this lithograph was intended was never issued by Vollard. He only began to sell individual impressions of the lithograph a number of years later, and it is rare for examples to appear on the market nowadays.