English: 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.
Date
between 1882 and 1884
date QS:P571,+1882-00-00T00:00:00Z/8,P1319,+1882-00-00T00:00:00Z/9,P1326,+1884-00-00T00:00:00Z/9
From Ingres to Gauguin: French Nineteenth Century Paintings Owned in Maryland. Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore. 1951. Before Monet: Landscape Painting in France and Impressionist Masters: Highlights from The Walters Collection. The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. 1998. A Day at the Races: Degas, Manet and Images of the Horse. National Gallery of Art, Washington. 1998. Highlights from the Collection. The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. 1998-2001. Vive la France! French Treasures from the Middle Ages to Monet. The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. 1999-2000. Triumph of French Painting: Masterpieces from Ingres to Matisse. Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore; Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach; Royal Academy of Arts, London; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Dayton Art Institute, Dayton. 2000-2002. A Magnificent Age: Masterpieces from the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte; The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. 2002-2004. Déjà Vu? Revealing Repetition in French Masterpieces. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix. 2007-2008. 19th Century Masterpieces from the Walters Art Museum. Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara; Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, Austin. 2010-2011.
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Captions
Before the Race, 1882–1884, oil on panel. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
== {{int:filedesc}} == {{Walters Art Museum artwork |artist = {{Creator:Edgar Degas}} |title = ''Before the Race'' |description = {{en|Throughout the latter part of his career, Degas was obsessed with the restless beauty of th...