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Source Description
Throughout the latter part of his career, Degas was obsessed with the restless beauty of the thoroughbred racehorse. Horse racing, which drew together throngs of people from many levels of society, was a singularly appropriate subject for representing modern life.Degas typically painted several versions of a composition, making slight variations in each. Here, riders and horses are shown in quiet and agitated movement. By the 1880s, Degas was making good use of recently published, stop-action photographs, which captured movement too fleeting to be perceived by the naked eye and which increased the artist's understanding of the horse in motion.
Scholar Source Context
Document identity
localId
21331
label
Before the Race
core
obj
dtoType
drawing
citationUrl
pageCount
2
Source metadata
id
21331
sourceUrl
contentType
drawing
stage
normalized
title
Before the Race
description
Throughout the latter part of his career, Degas was obsessed with the restless beauty of the thoroughbred racehorse. Horse racing, which drew together throngs of people from many levels of society, was a singularly appropriate subject for representing modern life.Degas typically painted several versions of a composition, making slight variations in each. Here, riders and horses are shown in quiet and agitated movement. By the 1880s, Degas was making good use of recently published, stop-action photographs, which captured movement too fleeting to be perceived by the naked eye and which increased the artist's understanding of the horse in motion.
provenance
Durand-Ruel; Cyrus J. Lawrence, New York; Cyrus J. Lawrence Sale, New York, January 21, 1910, no. 62; Henry Walters, Baltimore, January 21, 1910, by purchase; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.
date
1882-1884
citationUrl
rightsUri
CC0
language
en
genreSpecific
Painting & Drawing
paintings
imageCount
2
pageCount
2
source
import
dimensions
units
cm
width
26.4
height
34.9
dimensionsRaw
H: 10 3/8 x W: 13 3/4 in. (26.4 x 34.9 cm); Framed H: 22 5/8 x W: 25 15/16 x D: 4 in. (57.47 x 65.88 x 10.16 cm)
Source extras
inscriptions
""Degas
"" signed in lower right
med
oil on panel
creator_ids
6984
collection_ids
EAN
exhibition_ids
1962
442
2113
2159
2567
2749
13
316
2297
3191
3300
3607
Page inventory
seq
1
type
photo
mediaId
27b687f61ae1e7bd
hasOcr
no
hasDescription
no
seq
2
type
photo
mediaId
62fd9fb81f1ec97b
hasOcr
no
hasDescription
no