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Lot Essay
The subject of horse racing first appeared in Dufy's work as early as 1913, but it was not until the early 1920s, when the couturier Paul Poiret asked him to go to the races to study fashionable dress, that it began to become one of the most important themes of Dufy's oeuvre.
"Friends who accompanied Dufy on his earliest expeditions to the racecourse in the twenties...all speak of the way in which he was more interested in the horses' and jockeys' colours than he was in the people, smart or otherwise. Gradually, in Dufy's racecourse scenes... everything is again given up to the crisp, jaunty inter-action between green turf, red brick buildings, white railings, multi-coloured crowds, green trees against blue sky with sprightly puffs of clouds" (B. Robertson, 'An Introduction to Raoul Dufy', Raoul Dufy 1877-1953, exh. cat., London 1983).
"Friends who accompanied Dufy on his earliest expeditions to the racecourse in the twenties...all speak of the way in which he was more interested in the horses' and jockeys' colours than he was in the people, smart or otherwise. Gradually, in Dufy's racecourse scenes... everything is again given up to the crisp, jaunty inter-action between green turf, red brick buildings, white railings, multi-coloured crowds, green trees against blue sky with sprightly puffs of clouds" (B. Robertson, 'An Introduction to Raoul Dufy', Raoul Dufy 1877-1953, exh. cat., London 1983).