Before the Race — About This Work
Edgar Degas, c. 1887–89
About the Work
Four mounted riders gather across an extended landscape. The horses are poised within a moment before racing, giving Degas an opportunity to study the group as an arrangement of bodies, intervals and anticipated movement.
Scholars connect this pastel with an earlier version that Degas later traced in reverse. That proposed sequence helps explain the composition's deliberate structure while preserving the uncertainty appropriate to its reconstruction.
Pastel colour lies over a charcoal underdrawing on tracing paper. The layered support and reversed arrangement complicate any impression of a quickly caught scene: this is a worked composition whose apparent immediacy depends on sustained revision.
The Work
Artist: Edgar Degas
Title: Before the Race
Date: c. 1887–89
Medium: Pastel with charcoal underdrawing on tracing paper mounted on cardboard
Recorded dimensions: 65.4 × 57.5 cm (W × H)
Collection: Cleveland Museum of Art
Accession number: 1958.27
Print & Presentation
Palatine presentation: 60 × 80 cm Classic Frame, landscape.
The complete artwork is reproduced at its recorded scale, subject only to negligible whole-pixel rounding, without enlargement, reduction, cropping or distortion. The surrounding white presentation area accommodates the artwork within the framed presentation and is incorporated into the print rather than added as a separate mount.
Frame finishes: Black, White or Natural.
Paper & glazing: Enhanced Matte + Perspex; or Enhanced Matte + Moth-Eye.
Why Original Scale?
Most art-print shops offer the same image in a choice of Small, Medium and Large sizes. We take a different approach. For each edition, we begin with the recorded dimensions of the original work and reproduce the complete image at that scale, preserving its proportions and avoiding enlargement, reduction, cropping or distortion.
Source: Image: The Cleveland Museum of Art, CC0. Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna Jr.. 1958.27.
Care: Display in a dry interior away from prolonged direct sunlight and sources of moisture.
Notes from Palatine
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