Race Horses

A famous fine art painting from the famous painter Edgar Hilaire Germain Degas [French, 1834-1917]. Edgar Degas did quite work on racing scenes throughout his career. Degas manipulated the horses and jockeys from one painting to another—enlarging, reversing, or reducing them to fit the background. Race Horses is nevertheless unusual for its medium—pastel on a plain, unvarnished panel.

Degas spent even more time than ballet dancers & efforts in painting race horses and jockeys. Paul-Andre Lemoisne catalogued some ninety-one fine art oil paintings in this category, during the period from 1860 to 1900. As with the Paris Opera, the spectacle of the turf gave Degas the base material from which to forge images of modern life in an alloy that fused references to the art of the past with details observed from life and scrupulously documented. Race Horses and Jockeys had more variations and adjustments than any other work of Degas.Race Horses was done using pastel, and not oil, on panel: the wood here, possibly light mahogany, is similar to those used for cigar boxes.

Notwithstanding pastel on panel is not a unique combination, yet Degas used it very rarely. Degas used the amber, grainy surface of the wood to suggest a mackerel sky, and hills in the background, he tentatively applied the pastel lightly.

By varring the degree of pressure on crayons, Degas achieved the bright sheen of the jockeys' silks, but it is much more active in describing the closely hatched, wispy grass that occupies most of the foreground. Race Horses depicts a lovely variety in the postures of the horses: the three jockeys in the foreground make up a closely linked unit, who turns around to catch the eye of his two companions.