Analysis of Degas' Aux Courses en Province (At the Races in the Country)

A detailed Summary of Analysis of Degas' Aux Courses en Province (At the Races in the Country)

Aux Courses en Province is an oil on canvas work, painted by Edgar Degas in 1872. Degas depicts a group of upper-class tourists attending the races in the French countryside. In the lower-right foreground resides a stationary horse carriage. The carriage's passengers, comprised of a coachman, a small dog and two women - one cradling a baby while the other holds an parasol - appear to be wholly uninterested in the scene behind them, instead paying attention to the baby. In the distance, racehorses bolt across the green pasture as several onlookers, mounted upon their own horses, mill about. The azure sky above is vast, taking up more than half of the canvas, and is filled with feathery clouds. It can be assumed that the time of day is the early afternoon by looking at the small shadows the figures cast and the parasol being held by one of the women, suggesting that the sun is more or less directly overhead.

The work follows Degas' unorthodox style of arbitrarily cropping figures by placing the horse-carriage directly in the bottom right foreground of the painting. The result gives the viewer the feeling that the painting somehow extends beyond the borders of the canvas, making the field seem that much more expansive. This also el

Degas has rendered the figures casually, exemplifying the psychological detachment of the Flaneur. Of the three that are actually turned towards the viewer, the figures' faces are portrayed only as patches of color, thus eliminating any sort of expression. They are strictly parts of a whole. This all contributes to the sense of the "false narrative". Upon the initial glance, it appears as though there could be a story behind the scene. Closer inspection reveals that Degas' intention is not for the viewer to focus on what the figures are doing, but rather to have them try and take the scene in as a whole; that is, the people can be looked upon as both decorative and functional elements in a larger visual pun.

Thus, what initially looks like a rather simple and idyllic scene of a pleasant day at the races in the country is in fact another of Degas' clever visual manipulations. He refuses the renaissance notion of a 2-D plane as a window into depth, and instead plays with the compression of space through the use of cropping, neutral lighting, and color patches.

iminates the possibility of the horse-carriage becoming the only point of focus in the painting. The most important thing to note here, though, is that Degas has omitted the areas where the horse carriage comes in contact with the ground. This makes its location and scale in relation with the rest of the painting hard to discern. The image becomes effectively flattened, as though the horse-carriage could actually be a two-dimensional cardboard cutout that somehow manifested itself in front of Degas while he was painting. (This is actually quite possible - at least in the sense th

Some common words found in the essay are:
Edgar Degas, Aux Courses, azure sky, horse carriage, color patches, figures background, horizon line,

Approximate Word count = 1110
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Arts