The Races at Longchamp
1866
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
44 × 84.2 cm (17 5/16 × 33 1/8 in.); Framed: 69.6 × 109.9 × 10.2 cm (27 3/8 × 43 1/4 × 4 in.)
Classification
oil on canvas
Department
Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
81533
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
This freely executed painting captures the thrilling conclusion of a horse race at Longchamp, located at the Bois de Boulogne on the western edge of Paris. Here, Édouard Manet radically departed from conventional representations of the sport, in which races were shown from the side with the horses in profile. Instead, the competitors gallop thunderously toward the viewer, raising a cloud of turf, their pace underlined by the sweeping diagonals of the racetrack fences. In France, horse racing be...