Image: Queensland Art Gallery; Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane
Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art has drawn attention to Edgar Degas with a brief collection note centred on ‘Two lithographs after Edgar Degas’. The works are described as introducing two themes associated with the French Impressionist: horse racing, and the effort to capture subjects in natural or unguarded moments.
The note appears in QAGOMA’s email update, which presents a series of stories and videos connected to the institution’s exhibitions and collection. Within that roundup, the Degas item sits alongside features on other artists and artworks, but its focus is specific: the pair of lithographs and the visual concerns they open up in Degas’s practice. No exhibition date or venue is attached to the entry itself.
Degas, who lived from 1834 to 1917, remains closely associated with the modern city, movement and the observation of everyday life. The wording of the note points to two of the artist’s recurring interests. Horse racing gave Degas a setting in which to study motion, rhythm and the spectacle of modern leisure, while his attention to “natural or unguarded moments” reflects his long-standing interest in scenes that appear unposed or incidental.
Because the works are lithographs “after” Degas, the note also points to the afterlife of his imagery in printmaking. QAGOMA identifies both as the work of the lithographer Georges William Thornley (2 May 1857–1935): Les Jockeys c.1888–89, a copy in reverse after Degas’s pastel Before the race c.1887–89 in the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Le Bain c.1888, after the pastel Le tub 1886 in the Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington, Connecticut. Both were made for Quinze lithographies d’après Degas, published in 1889 by Boussod, Valadon & Cie in Paris in an edition of 100 impressions plus 25 proofs, and printed by the Parisian studio Becquet; the Les Jockeys sheet is a proof “before letters” signed by both Degas and Thornley.
QAGOMA’s framing places the pair within the gallery’s broader collection storytelling, pairing Le Bain with the bronze Danseuse regardant la plante de son pied droit c.1882–1900, on display in the International Art Collection in Galleries 7, 8 and 9 (Philip Bacon Galleries) at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane. The institution’s update also refers readers to its collection and to a free Drawing Festival in the Queensland Art Gallery on 25 and 26 July 2026, but those items are separate from the Degas note and are not described as part of the same work or programme. The Degas entry itself remains a compact interpretive prompt rather than an exhibition announcement.
That compactness is part of its usefulness. In a few lines, the gallery connects one of modern art’s most widely studied figures to themes that have shaped scholarship on Degas for decades: the visual drama of horse racing and the challenge of representing people in candid, transient poses. The source does not elaborate beyond that, but the combination of artist, subject and medium offers a clear guide to how QAGOMA is presenting the works to its audience.
