Degas at the Races: Paintings and Drawings

At the Races: Before the Start, c. 1885-1892, oil on canvas, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

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At the Races: Before the Start contains the same carefully arranged images as in The Dance Lesson. The horizontal composition is similar to that painting, but it is even more friezelike. Again, there is a sense of informality, with some horses turning toward the viewer, others into the picture. In the center is a jockey trying to control a tense, nervous horse. Versions of this horse are repeated over and over again; it is one of Degas' favorite motifs.

Instead of reading this painting from left to right, you read from right to left, moving on a diagonal from the large, prominent horses to smaller and smaller forms on the left. The composition is very flat, almost abstract, with little detail. Against this predominant planar quality, Degas suggests distance by making the forms smaller as if they recede in space. Figures are arrayed across the picture plane in the middle ground, and yet, because the horses become smaller and smaller, there is a sense of depth. Here, too, is evidence of Degas' knowledge of Japanese prints, in which compositions are often dependent on sequences of planes. For example, the green grass creates a foreground plane, the mountains form another plane, and behind them, the sky is still another plane.

Degas also uses basic color principles to amplify the sense of spatial recession: bright colors come forward, as in the vivid hues of the jockeys in the foreground; darker, cooler colors recede into the background. This may seem elementary, but in Degas' hands, it is highly sophisticated, with colors and intensities balanced as carefully as the forms.