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The 1821 Derby at Epsom

Théodore Géricault, 1821

Théodore Géricault's The 1821 Derby at Epsom shows four racehorses stretched out at full speed beneath a heavy, clouded sky. Painted in 1821, it belongs to the Department of Paintings of the Louvre. It is a compact canvas that rewards a close look at how the artist conveyed motion.

Where to see it

The painting is held by the Louvre, in its Department of Paintings. The fact sheet lists its location as Room 941. Museums regularly rehang galleries, renumber rooms, lend works to other institutions or take paintings off view for conservation, so check the Louvre's official website for current display status and location before you visit. The canvas measures 92 × 122.5 cm, so it is easy to view up close rather than from across the room.

What to look for in person

The 'flying gallop'

Look at the horses' legs. Each animal is shown with its forelegs reaching forward and its hind legs stretched back, all four hooves clear of the ground. This pose was a long-standing artistic convention for depicting speed. Photographic studies of moving horses, made decades later by Eadweard Muybridge, showed that a galloping horse never actually takes this position. Standing in front of the canvas, notice how the convention still works visually: the elongated bodies read as pure forward momentum, almost as if the horses were skimming over the turf.

A brooding sky and low horizon

Géricault sets the horizon low, so the horses are silhouetted largely against the sky rather than the land. That sky is not a calm summer backdrop: look for the dark, heavy clouds pressing down on the scene and the contrast between them and the lighter areas near the horizon. The landscape itself is kept simple, with few distracting details. This restraint focuses attention on the horses while the weather adds tension and drama, a mood often associated with Romantic painting.

Riders, silks and a frieze of horses

Move closer to study the jockeys. Their brightly coloured silks give small, sharp accents against the brown and grey tones of the horses and land. The four horses are spaced closely and run almost in parallel, arranged across the picture like a frieze, which makes the composition easy to read at a glance. Notice the slender legs and small heads of the animals, characteristic of the English racehorse type. Horses were a lifelong subject for Géricault, and his attention to their build and bearing is evident here.

About the painting

Théodore Géricault was a French painter closely associated with the Romantic movement and best known for The Raft of the Medusa. Around 1820 to 1821 he spent time in Britain, where that large painting was exhibited. During this stay he encountered English horse racing and the British tradition of sporting art, and The 1821 Derby at Epsom, dated 1821, comes from this period. The Derby is run on the downs at Epsom, and the subject reflects the artist's fascination with both British racing culture and the horse as a subject.

The canvas measures 92 × 122.5 cm, a moderate size well suited to close viewing. It is best understood not as a documentary record of a particular race but as a study in the sensation of speed. The horses' outstretched 'flying gallop' pose follows an established pictorial convention, later shown to be anatomically inaccurate by photographic studies of animal motion. That later discovery has made the painting a frequently cited example in discussions of how artists represented movement before photography.

The work also shows features often associated with Géricault's Romanticism: a charged, stormy sky, a strong sense of energy and an emphasis on the physical power of animals. At the same time, the composition is orderly, with the horses arranged in a clear horizontal band.

Géricault died in 1824, only a few years after painting this scene, which makes his British works part of a relatively short late phase of his career. Today the painting belongs to the Department of Paintings of the Louvre.

Key facts

Sources

• Wikidata Q429753
• www.louvre.fr
• contact.louvre.fr