The False Start

A false start is a failure of the fixture

The title names a specific incident in the running of a race: a start that does not stand, and has to be called back and taken again. It is an unusual thing to paint. A racing picture normally shows the animal doing its competitive job well or spectacularly, and a false start shows the apparatus of the sport misfiring — horses committed to a run that is being cancelled, and riders pulling them up.

What the record holds

The catalogue gives 1870 as the date of creation and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, as the location. No dimensions are recorded for this work. Impressionism is the style term and French the nationality attached to the painter. The record carries group portraiture and a religious cultural heritage tag alongside Animal Art > Horse; the religious tag has no support in the title and is best treated as an artefact of automated categorisation. The measured colour family of the image is brown.

Why the register flags bad tags rather than deleting them

Subject tagging at catalogue scale produces errors, and silently correcting them would hide how the data was built. Where a category contradicts the title, this register says which one it is following.