Race of Mounted Horses at the Start

Three racehorses go off together on flat open ground under a grey sky, a chestnut out in front with a grey and a dark horse pressed close behind it, their riders in caps and coloured jackets. The Louvre's title fixes the instant as the moment of the start. Géricault painted it in oil on paper, later laid down on canvas, probably in the early 1820s, in the last years of his life. The riders may be someone else's work. Charles Clément, who compiled the first catalogue of his paintings in 1868, recorded that the painter had only indicated the jockeys with a thin rub of paint, and that they were finished after his death by Hippolyte Bellangé, a younger artist known for scenes of Napoleon's soldiers. The Louvre's record repeats Clément's account, which leaves the horses to Géricault himself.