Gentlemen's Race. Before the Start

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.