Before the Start
Oil on canvas. 39.5 x 89 cm.
Degas, Painted between 1878 and 1880, Lemoisne, II, 503.

Degas wishes to catch the fleeting moment in a picture – and here he is a true Impressionist, though he rejects the label –, and thus the "races" and the "dance", his major themes, are most compatible with this aim. Degas was proud to have been the first, even before Manet, to discover race-horses for French art. He begins with racing pictures early in the 60s, perhaps having been inspired by recollections of a sojourn in England. Around 1870 the first classical versions of this theme appear; it remains important throughout the 70s and 80s, and fades out gradually in the 90s.
In contrast to Manet, who represents the race itself, Degaà interest is always concentrated on the jockeys before the start warming up their horses; what excites him are the varying gaits and foreshortened perspectives of the horses, in so far as he is not fascinated by the spectators on the grandstands, and in their victorias and landaus.
From the 70s he employs the low horizontal shape, as in our picture, which goes back to the Far Eastern painted silk scrolls. Also a "Japanese" motif is the rails in the foreground.