At the Races: The Start by Degas in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2023

Title: At the Races: The Start

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

Date: ca. 1860–62

Geography: Country of Origin France

Culture: French

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 13 × 18 1/2 in. (33 × 47 cm)
Frame: 18 × 23 1/2 × 2 3/4 in. (45.7 × 59.7 × 7 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Annie Swan Coburn (1934.30)


Although Degas rarely painted outdoors, beginning in the early 1860s he revealed a keen interest in racetrack scenes. For this early painting, he modeled the anatomical features and poses of the horses on both British prints and the work of the Romantic painter Théodore Géricault. The horse at the far left, positioned with its head and front leg raised high, appears to be performing a dressage exercise rather than preparing for a race, perhaps indicating the artist’s reliance on a published source. Degas’s depiction of horses in motion changed drastically over his career, particularly after the 1887 publication of Eadweard Muybridge’s chronophotographic series recording the locomotion of a galloping horse.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/844641