The Races at Longchamp

Édouard Manet · 1866

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

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.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Impressionism

Few paintings from the 1860s carry the raw kinetic charge of Manet's depiction of the races at the Hippodrome de Longchamp, where a pack of thoroughbreds bears down on the viewer at full gallop. Manet was a regular at Longchamp, drawn by the spectacle of modern Parisian life as much as by the compositional challenge it posed. Rather than showing the horses in profile — the conventional approach — he chose a radical head-on perspective, compressing the field into a blur of legs and dust. The result is closer to a snapshot than a traditional sporting picture, and it anticipates the visual language of Impressionism by several years. His loose, confident brushwork captures movement without resolving it into neat detail, which is precisely what gives the scene its urgency. The painting is widely cited as one of the earliest examples of a foreshortened horse-racing composition in Western art, and it clearly influenced Degas, who would go on to make the racecourse his own territory. Our hand-painted oil reproduction is executed on canvas using the same medium as the original, allowing the energy of Manet's brushwork — those slashing strokes of mane and hoof — to translate faithfully from the walls of the Art Institute of Chicago to yours.