Os Jóqueis

Lautrec was 17 in 1882 and about to change direction. He had spent four years learning from Rene Princeteau, a painter of horses and hunting scenes who was a friend of his father's, and horses fill almost everything he made as a boy. That spring he went to Paris and into an academic studio, and within a few years the subject had gone, replaced by dance halls and theatres. This is one of the last of the horse pictures. A country meeting with amateur riders, a dog loose on the grass, rain clouds stacked behind them so that the light arrives from the far side and the shadows fall towards the viewer. The canvas carries no date of its own. 1882 is the year scholars have settled on for it.