Das Derby von Epsom 1821

Géricault painted this in 1821, during a stay in England, and it caught something everyone in his day accepted as simply true. The four horses are stretched flat out, front legs and back legs flung apart at full reach, the way people had drawn a gallop for centuries. Half a century later the photographer Eadweard Muybridge froze a running horse frame by frame and showed that a horse never actually holds this pose. Its legs bunch under the body at the moment of full spread. So the animals here are running in a way no horse can. Géricault had worked at the imperial stables and knew horses closely, yet he was painting the felt speed of a race, not a still. He made it for an English horse dealer named Adam Elmore. The race that year at Epsom was won by a grey called Gustavus, the first grey ever to take it.