About this work
A group of jockeys on horseback occupies the foreground of this quietly electric painting, their mounts gathered in that charged interval between preparation and motion. *Jockeys on Horseback Before Distant Hills* is an oil on canvas measuring approximately 17¾ × 21⅝ inches — an intimate scale that pulls the viewer close. The composition is characteristically horizontal, with the riders strung across the picture plane and gently rolling hills receding behind them. Degas renders the horses with a coiled, muscular precision, their silhouettes varied in pose: some calm, some restive. The palette is earthy and luminous — warm ochres and greens in the landscape, bright splashes of jockey silks cutting against the muted hillside. Open sky above, open ground below; the figures are suspended in a moment of suspension itself, just before the race begins.
Horse racing was a recurrent theme in Degas's oeuvre from the 1860s, but this 1884 canvas belongs to a more mature phase of that obsession. Degas frequently sketched horses and riders from life at the courses at Vincennes and Longchamps, and was particularly interested in equine anatomy, making wax sculptures of horses over armatures and using studio props — small wooden horses or chessmen — to work out his equestrian compositions.
Throughout his career Degas was drawn to subjects that reflected urban modernity, and the racecourse was exactly that: a theatre of Parisian society playing out in open air. Notably, this work was among those selected to represent Degas at the landmark 1913 Armory Show in New York, where Arthur B. Davies categorized Degas as a Classicist and a precursor to Cézanne, Gauguin, Matisse, the Post-Impressionists, and the Cubists. The painting now resides in the Detroit Institute of Arts.
On the wall, this painting rewards a room with some breathing room around it — a study, a library, or a sitting room where natural light can settle across it during the day. The muted, open-country palette sits comfortably alongside warm wood tones, leather, or neutral linens. It speaks most directly to viewers who are drawn to stillness with tension underneath — the hush before speed, the discipline beneath apparent ease. There is no drama of the race itself here, only that peculiar, focused calm that precedes it: a quality that makes the painting feel perpetually unresolved, perpetually alive.
