Jockey in Blue on a Chestnut Horse

A title that describes the pairing

Racing titles usually name an event. This one names a pairing, a rider in his silks together with the animal under him. That is how the sport identifies a runner in a given race, by colours plus mount, which makes a title built this way closer to a racecard entry than to a description of a scene.

What the record holds

The date of creation is 1889 and the location is the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. The dimensions are not recorded. Impressionism is the recorded style, French the recorded nationality. The measured colour family of the image is ochre.

Two kinds of colour information

These pages carry colour from two different places and the two should not be confused. One comes from the title, written by whoever named the work, and describes what the namer says is there. The other is measured from the image file and reduced to a family, which is why it can disagree with the title. This record is a clear case of the disagreement. Both values are printed, neither is corrected, and no attempt is made here to decide between them.

Function, unchanged by either

Whatever the colours, the job is fixed by the words jockey and race: a professional riding at weight, on an animal kept for the purpose.