If you're seeing this message, it means we're having trouble loading external resources on our website.

If you're behind a web filter, please make sure that the domains *.kastatic.org and *.kasandbox.org are unblocked.

Main content

Degas, At the Races in the Countryside

Edgar Degas, At the Races in the Countryside, 1869, oil on canvas, 36.5 x 55.9 cm / 14-3/8 x 22 inches (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.

Want to join the conversation?

  • winston default style avatar for user Emily Mickel
    Why was some of the painting- such as the legs of the horses- cut off?
    (4 votes)
    Default Khan Academy avatar avatar for user
    • leaf green style avatar for user John
      Degas was especially influenced by the new science/art of photography, and often composed his works with a spontaneous snapshot quality. It works the same way as when you arbitrarily cut off parts of a scene when you use a camera, and adds to the immediacy of the "impression."
      (12 votes)
  • leaf green style avatar for user Jon Dough
    Why did upper-class women hire wet nurses? I would of thought they'd be too snobbish for that.
    (2 votes)
    Default Khan Academy avatar avatar for user
    • duskpin ultimate style avatar for user The Q
      They were too snobbish to their own children. Above 'chores' such as this.Also, at this time (and for quite some time,throughout the world, especially England), children were to be seen and not heard, and in some cases were the last to eat the table scraps- even after the dogs had eaten! Another example of this isolation is the concept of boarding schools, where they would see family only occasionally, maybe only once a year.
      (5 votes)
  • hopper cool style avatar for user Dylan Han
    Why is the painting so blurry?
    (2 votes)
    Default Khan Academy avatar avatar for user
    • female robot grace style avatar for user Lily
      Degas was an Impressioninst painter, and the Impressionists' artistic goal was to depict the atmosphere surrounding their subject at the exact moment that they were painting. Unlike most artists of the time period, the Impressionists went outside and painted from observation there rather than inside in their studios. Degas may have made the work blurry to reflect the cloudy weather that day. It also may appear blurry in places where he used quick brushstrokes to capture the atmosphere before the scene he was viewing changed.
      Another (much more obvious) example of quick brushstrokes necessitated by changing weather is in Monet's Impression: Sunrise, which you can examine if you would like to see another example of this technique.
      (4 votes)
  • blobby green style avatar for user Robert Liiv
    At the top of the painting there seems to be a fringe of some sort that suggests that Degas possibly depicted this scene through a carriage window which would explain the snap shot sensibility and the cropped feel of the image.
    (2 votes)
    Default Khan Academy avatar avatar for user
  • blobby green style avatar for user barbara kowalski
    It is possible that it is the wet nurse who is holding and preparing to feed the child. She is very simply dressed and it would have been inconceivable for a "lady" to show her breast in this way. It was one of the reasons that they emplyoyed wet nurses. I wonder if the figure looking over her shoulder is in fact the mother? Do we have historical confirmation of the identity of the women in the carriage?
    (2 votes)
    Default Khan Academy avatar avatar for user
  • duskpin ultimate style avatar for user The Q
    Is the fringe like,smeary feature across the top intentional as in the fringe of a hat or parasol, or is it damage to the painting, or a degradation problem with the computer transmission?Or perhaps it is outlining like I see around some other objects in the work?
    (1 vote)
    Default Khan Academy avatar avatar for user
    • mr pants teal style avatar for user Deanna
      Do you mean the darker part of the sky? I'm thinking that's just shadowing from the frame. You can see it around :15 that it's kept in a frame on the wall and there is shadowing on the frame itself so the shadows continue onto the painting below.
      (1 vote)
  • leaf green style avatar for user JZalonis
    I find it interesting that the family in the carriage is heading away from the scene of the action, where others are just now apparently arriving. Do you suppose this might mean there is some sort of rejection of (or by) the upper-class (those who are rich enough to participate in horse racing)?
    (1 vote)
    Default Khan Academy avatar avatar for user
    • purple pi purple style avatar for user Residuum
      These people are dressed as upper class of their time. And upper class people were partial to horse racing. Commoners usually could not go to these events. The carriage might just be placed that way. Or maybe that's just how they parked them. To me it looks like they were just getting there and the baby started crying, And that is the moment that was captured in this picture. It could have some hidden meaning though, As art is ripe with symbolism. Very interesting question by the way.
      (1 vote)

Video transcript

BETH HARRIS: It's often the case that when you're traveling with the baby, it demands a lot of attention. And that's what's happening in this small painting by Degas called "At the Races in the Countryside." STEVEN ZUCKER: And that infant is clearly the center of this family's attention. BETH HARRIS: And their dog's attention too. STEVEN ZUCKER: Yes, it's true. In fact, it only looks like the horses are perhaps not paying attention. So it's such an interesting composition. It's Degas at his most playful. We see a painting that seems as if it is uncomposed, as if it were almost a snapshot. BETH HARRIS: And that's what Degas is so good at, is making his paintings, which are so carefully composed, seem as though it's a scene that he just happened to come upon. And I think we're used to this because of photography. STEVEN ZUCKER: But in the 19th century, this would have been pretty outrageous. I mean, look at the way he's cropped the wagon wheels. He's cropped the horses. They don't have the bottom of their legs. And then he gets even more playful. Not only is the family group sort of pushed a little bit too far to the right, but then there's this very large spatial gap as we move into the middle ground where the figures are really small. I'm particularly fond of the way that little horse seems to just be standing on the back of the carriage. BETH HARRIS: Or there's another tiny figure that seems to be perched on the back of the brown horse in the foreground. STEVEN ZUCKER: These are incongruities that the Academy would, of course, have never allowed, but that Degas seems to really relish. BETH HARRIS: In an academic painting, we expect things to make sense. We expect all the forms to be included whole within the frame of the painting. We expect to be able to read a recession into space so that, for example, those figures that look so small would make sense, and we would understand the distance between the foreground and the background. But here Degas has painted a flat, green expanse that we can't really read as depth. STEVEN ZUCKER: But of course, the most interesting part of this painting for me is contained within the carriage itself. It's the family and their interaction. BETH HARRIS: It's really very sweet. And there is all of that attention on the infant, and whether it's going to eat, and whether it's going to stop being fussy. Historically, upper class women often didn't nurse their own children and would hire women who were known as wet nurses who would nurse infants. STEVEN ZUCKER: So a very intimate kind of nanny, I think you could say. BETH HARRIS: I think so. STEVEN ZUCKER: And actually you can see her breast is exposed, and all of the figures are looking down at the child. So issues of class are very much built into this painting. BETH HARRIS: An upper class women would certainly not reveal herself in this way. STEVEN ZUCKER: The wet nurse is, in a sense, an accoutrement of the life of the upper class, and very much the way that little black boxer is as well, that little dog. BETH HARRIS: The dog and the family that it belongs to appear very aristocratic to me. The dog appears like a very specific breed and is sitting kind of upright. And the man has a top hat on, is clearly very well dressed. His wife is very well dressed. And that does contrast with the informality of the working class wet nurse that we see. STEVEN ZUCKER: And of course, we're in an environment which is about horse racing. This is at a time when horse racing was an extremely privileged sport. So we are in this very genteel and very fashionable environment. And yet we have this moment of informality within that. BETH HARRIS: We have a scene of modern upper class leisure, and this is a very typical Impressionist subject. And it's an entirely new subject. And it's really the beginnings of what we consider modern art, a kind of embracing of the real urban world of Paris in the second half of the 19th century.