Description
Year of creation: 1882–1884
Original size: 34.9 cm x 26.4 cm
Painting style: Impressionism
Original technique: Oil on panel
Located: Walters Art Museum, Baltimore (inv. 37.850)
Before the Race – Edgar Degas
Five riders wait on an ochre racecourse under a pale sky. At the left front a rider in a yellow jacket with orange sleeves and a dark red cap sits on a light bay, turned towards us and still. Just behind him another rider with a blue neckerchief leans far forward. Our hand-painted oil painting keeps exactly that waiting before the start.
The horse that has dropped its head
The horse in front of him has dropped its head almost to the grass – a movement that has nothing to do with the race and everything to do with what a horse does when nobody is urging it. Further right two more riders are seen from behind: one in orange and white, the other, smaller, in yellow at the right edge. The signature is at the lower right.
Wood instead of canvas
The support is not canvas but a wooden panel, and the paint is laid so thinly that at the lower right the wood shows through it. The panel measures 34.9 x 26.4 cm, less than a sheet of paper; five horses and five riders stand on a surface you could hold in one hand.
Legs the eye cannot catch
In these years Degas was looking at photographs of arrested movement, so the horses’ legs stand in positions the eye alone does not catch. What the same sport looks like when something goes wrong is shown by The Fallen Jockey, and the race as a family outing by At the Races in the Countryside. The work is today in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.
Our version
Our version is a hand-painted oil painting on canvas. Every canvas is painted individually, in the size and frame you choose. The painter works from the original with brush and oils, so the strokes and the layering stay visible – the part a print cannot reproduce.
