At the Races in the Countryside

Horse racing, a sport of English origin, became popular on the Continent at the end of the eighteenth century, and soon inspired such painters as Carle Vernet and Th�odore G�ricault, who were both influenced by English artists. It attracted the interest of later painters, too. Manet emphasized the elegance of these occasions, while Degas preferred to observe the horses in motion. He focused on the movements of man and animal. His first sketches of racecourses date back to the beginning of the 1860s. At first he was interested in the jockeys, but he also turned a keen eye on the spectators. This led to the At the Races in the Countryside.

Degas never tires of the theme of the racecourse. On September 27, 1881, the newspaper “Le Globe” started publishing Major Muybridge’s photographs of a galloping horse, and Degas used them for his sketches. The photographs showed that traditional English prints were inaccurate when depicting galloping horses with their front legs outstretched. This is how Degas painted the horses racing in the background of At the Races in the Countryside of 1869.

Degas exhibited this moderately colourful work at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. The race itself is in the background, the foreground is occupied by a family scene centred on a baby, with the nurse, mother, father and even the dog atop the box. The family is the Valpin�on family: the driver of the carriage is Degas’s friend Paul Valpin�on, who is shown with his wife, a wet nurse, and in the nurse’s lap, the couple’s son, Henri. The people in the carriage are caught in their fashionable elegance.