Louis Anquetin

Mme B., France
Private Collection, France
Thence by descent to the present owner

Paris, Galerie Brame & Lorenceau, Anquetin: La Passion d'être peintre, 1991, no. 30, illustrated in the catalogue

Aux courses speaks to the artist’s life-long concerns within a single, ravishing image. This painting serves as the artist’s response to some of the greatest of all Impressionist multi-figure compositions, such as Renoir’s Au Moulin de la Galette and Manet’s Music in the Tuileries Gardens, as well as the changing face of modern art. Aux courses depicts the flirtatious interactions of men and women at the Longchamp Racecourse outside Paris. Painted circa 1892-95, shortly after the death of van Gogh and the self-imposed exile of Gauguin in Tahiti, when Anquetin became one of the most innovative and radical artists still working in France.

In the background of Aux courses we see the iconic looped post that marked the finish line at Longchamp, which was, and remains, the most prestigious flats racecourse in France, hosting the world-renowned Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. For Anquetin and his contemporaries, Longchamp showcased modern society; in the foreground a woman enthusiastically displays herself to two gentlemen. They are surrounded by other representatives of the beau monde, nearly all of whom turn to observe the main protagonists. Scarcely visible in the background are the horses and the jockeys walking out to the course; the attendees clearly exhibit more interest in each other than in the race. As Henry de Conty observes, "For some years, race-courses have been the meeting place for the world of fashion in their sumptuous carriages. They are one of the pleasures most aristocratically enjoyed. People go there because they like it, because it’s smart, and because they want to vie with one another’s luxury and clothes."

Anquetin’s Aux courses comes at the end of the evolution of the sporting image. Just as French horseracing derived from British models, so did French painters interested in races look to English sporting artists for inspiration. These prototypes usually focused on the horses and the race rather than the spectators or surroundings. In Manet's great and highly modern The Races in the Bois de Boulogne (see fig. 1), the race is seen mid-action, the horses daringly cropped and in a blur of athletic action. Anquetin takes a different approach, subversively inverting this focus away from the central event itself.

This reversal of priorities is one of the ironies permeating the Impressionists’ depictions of social gatherings. Compositionally, Aux courses echoes one of Manet’s first large-scale society paintings, Music in the Tuileries Gardens, 1862, where figures engage in mutual admiration but whose interest in music appears nonexistent. 

The loose painterly style of Anquetin’s Aux courses derives from Pierre-Auguste Renoir, whose depictions of high society, in particular Bal du Moulin de la Galette (see fig. 2), implicate the viewer in a web of gazes between subjects and objects. Like Renoir, Anquetin viewed the beau monde as an outsider, with the races affording an excellent vantage point. In 1869 Larousse noted that: "It is not precisely the love of horses that drives so many spectators to the races... [The] masses…are always eager to go there, where they know that they will meet people from high society; the most elegant women and the most extravagant ‘toilettes’...and it is there that the fashionable courtesans show themselves in the whole splendour of their dazzling costumes."

For Anquetin, who was on familiar terms with Lautrec, Bonnard, Seurat, Gauguin, van Gogh and Signac, exploring new modes of looking was second nature. In Aux courses he subverts the traditional sporting picture and creates a boldly experimental modern work.