Gig Upsetting at the Races

Gig Upsetting at the Races belongs to de Loutherbourg's body of sporting and accident subjects, which occupied a significant place in his output for English patrons who valued the sporting genre and the visual excitement of sudden incidents. A gig — a light two-wheeled carriage — overturning at the races would have been a familiar sight to Georgian English audiences who followed horse racing closely, and the subject combines the fashionable sporting scene with the kind of violent incident de Loutherbourg had explored more grandly in his ship-wreck and battle paintings.

Dynamic diagonal composition captures the moment of overturning — horse and vehicle at sharp angles, figures thrown or bracing. Warm ochres and reddish browns in the horses and earth contrast with a blue-grey sky.