ASHLEYS FURNITURE REVIEWS

Edgar Degas' Chevaux de courses (Racehorses), on loan from the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, was executed from 1895-1899. An excellent example of Degas's later working method, "Racehorses" is a fully realized pastel painting, complete with what are construed to be the artist's obsessive retouches in the sky. Degas used tracing paper as his support, which allowed him the ease of replicating a composition from a favourite bank of images, as witnessed by the existence of two other versions of these racehorses. The rich and complex textural array of colour is the result of a thick, impasto-like buildup of intermittently fixed layers of pastel.


This painting was part of the "From Cézanne to Picasso, Masterpieces from the Vollard Gallery" exhibit at Musée d'Orsay. The traveling exhibit is the first comprehensive exhibition devoted to Ambroise Vollard (1866–1939)—the pioneer dealer, patron, and publisher who played a key role in promoting and shaping the careers of many of the leading artists during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It includes 100 paintings, as well as dozens of ceramics, sculpture, prints, and livres d'artistes commissioned and published by Vollard, dating from the time of his appearance on the Paris art scene in the late 1880s to his death in 1939.

The Musée d'Orsay (The Orsay Museum), housed in the former railway station, the Gare d'Orsay, holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1914, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography, and is probably best known for its extensive collection of impressionist masterpieces by popular painters such as Monet and Renoir. Many of these works were held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume prior to the museum's opening in 1986.

D200+AF-S DX Zoom Nikkor ED 17-55mm F2.8G