Jockeys at Epsom

A course name that recurs in this catalogue

Epsom appears in two titles in this register. One is dated 1821 and recorded at the Louvre; this one is dated 1862. A place-name doing that is worth pausing on, because it is evidence about the subject rather than about either picture. Racing was a fixture: the same course, the same calendar, the same public, year after year, which is exactly what makes it paintable more than once and by different hands. The animal's function in these pictures is competitive and paid, and the composition is organised around the crowd that came to see the result.

What the record holds

The catalogue gives 1862 as the date of creation and a private collection as the location. No dimensions are recorded; the field is empty. Impressionism is the style term and French the nationality attached to the painter. The categories are landscape, rural and Animal Art > Horse, and the measured colour families of the image are brown and red.

The rural tag on a racecourse

A course is a built facility with stands, rails and an enclosure, and this catalogue has an urban heading it uses on other racing entries. Here it has filed the work as rural instead. The disagreement is the kind of thing this register reports rather than corrects, because the tagging is not evidence and the title is.