Ascot (Champ de courses)

Ascot (Champ de courses), at the Musée d'Art moderne de Troyes, is one of a series of racecourse paintings Dufy produced around 1930, when the British racing world — Ascot, Epsom, Goodwood — had become one of his favourite subjects for the combination of pageantry, crowd, and landscape it offered. Dufy's late work was characterised by his distinctive calligraphic line floating over washes of colour, a technique ideally suited to rendering the movement and spectacle of fashionable events. His racecourse paintings are among the most commercially successful images of the interwar period.

Dufy's characteristic technique is fully evident here — thin, rapid washes of blue and green establishing the landscape ground, over which his lively drawn line describes horses, jockeys, spectators, and grandstand in shorthand notations that read as complete despite their apparent brevity. The light-filled transparency of the washes conveys the brilliant outdoor atmosphere of the English summer race meeting.