Riderless brown horse galloping across a green slope while the jockey lies on his back in the grass

The Fallen Jockey

See it in the 3D Museum View the full image

What you see

A brown horse with an empty saddle gallops to the left across a grassy slope, legs fully stretched. Below it, in the middle of the picture, the jockey lies on his back with his arms flung wide. He wears a pale shirt, yellow breeches and black boots. The hillside cuts across on a diagonal, with a cloudy sky above.

The intense green of the grass fills almost the whole canvas, with the horse’s reddish brown as the only large warm patch. The sky is painted in thick, loose strokes of white and blue. Seek out the white saddlecloth on the horse’s back, and a glimpse of open plain in the distance on the left.

About Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas is famous for his ballet dancers, whom he painted in classes, rehearsals and backstage more than a thousand times. He liked to capture movements of a single instant, as if they were photographs. Besides oil paint, he often used pastels, sticks of colour that give a soft, velvety look.

All 11 works by Edgar Degas