The False Start by Degas in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2023

Title: The False Start

Artist: Edgar Degas (French, Paris 1834–1917 Paris)

Date: ca. 1869–72

Geography: Country of Origin France

Culture: French

Medium: Oil on panel

Dimensions: 12 5/8 × 15 7/8 in. (32.1 × 40.3 cm)
Framed: 19 1/8 × 22 11/16 in. (48.6 × 57.6 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Yale University Art Gallery, John Hay Whitney, B.A. 1926, Hon. 1956, Collection (1982.111.6)

Here, Degas positions his viewer in the center of the track, looking over at the spectators in the shaded stands. After a false start, the jockey in the foreground struggles to restrain his horse so that he can return to the starting line. Before Eadweard Muybridge’s chronophotographic series documenting animal locomotion demonstrated that a galloping horse pulls in its limbs when it leaves the ground, painters remained faithful to pictorial convention that presents the animal in a kind of flight, with legs apart and outstretched. Degas began modeling sculptures of horses in wax around the time this painting was made.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/844732