03 — ARTWORK
Gentlemen's Race. Before the Start
- MEDIUM
- Oil on canvas, 49 x 62 cm
- TYPE
- Other
PALETTE
HOVER OR TAP A SWATCH FOR NAME, SHARE AND HEX. SAMPLED FROM THE IMAGE — INDICATIVE, NOT A PIGMENT ANALYSIS.
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- FILE
- 1309 × 1000 px · JPEG
COMMENTARY
UNDERLINED TERMS ARE DEFINED IN THE GLOSSARY.
Gentlemen's Race. Before the Start 1862 Oil on canvasA woven cloth used as a support for painting. The best-quality canvas is made of linen; other materials used are cotton, hemp, and jute. It is now so familiar a material that the word 'canvas' has become almost a synonym for an oil painting, but it was not until around 1500 that it began to rival the wooden panel (which was more expensive and took longer to prepare) as the standard support for movable paintings (the transition came later in Northern Europe than in Italy). Canvas is not suitable for painting on until it has been coated with a ground, which isolates the fabric from the paint; otherwise it will absorb too much paint, only very rough effects will be obtainable, and parts of the fabric may be rotted by the pigments. It must also be made taut on a stretcher or by some other means., 49 x 62 cm Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Degas's paintings used a restless patterning of colour patches and combined a precision rendering of positions with sketchy brushwork - especially for the background, where smoking factory chimneys or a glimpse of a railway train suggested the proximity of a modern city. Degas cropped his figures brusquely as if to emphasize that the picture could convey no more than a spatial and temporal section of a larger scene and continuing motion.
CITE THIS RECORD — BIBTEX
@online{wga-r1a275b77dc2a60,
author = {Krén, Emil and Marx, Daniel},
title = {Gentlemen's Race. Before the Start by DEGAS, Edgar},
organization = {{Web Gallery of Art}},
date = {2026-09-09},
url = {https://beta.wga.hu/artists/degas-edgar-r23677dd168a294/gentlemens-race-before-the-start-r1a275b77dc2a60},
urldate = {2026-09-09},
langid = {english}
}ACCESSED 2026-09-09. REPLACE THE AUTHOR FIELD WITH THE COMMENTARY AUTHOR WHERE ONE IS NAMED.
