Racehorses in a Landscape

Racehorses in a Landscape, a pastel on paper from around 1894 now at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, belongs to Degas's final phase of racecourse imagery. By the early 1890s he was producing these works largely from memory and sculptural models, his personal observation of horses reduced by deteriorating eyesight. The late pastel brings an intensity of color and a boldness of form to the subject that compensates in expressive power for what it surrenders in naturalistic detail. The landscape setting — more prominent than in many of his racecourse works — is handled with atmospheric looseness that suits the pastel medium's capacity for blended, atmospheric color.

The pastel technique allows for rich layering of color across both figures and landscape. The horses are rendered as powerful masses of warm color — ochres, russets — against the cooler blues and greens of the landscape. The late style shows Degas's increased willingness to use color for its own sake rather than descriptive accuracy: shadows are vivid violets, highlights sharp yellows. The overall effect is coloristically richer than his earlier racecourse work, trading naturalism for expressive intensity.