In this series David and Harry visit the Courtauld Gallery in Central London where they look at 3 paintings. In this first episode they look at Edgar Degas’s Jockeys Before the Race c.1879 which is on lone from the Barber Institute of Fine Art in Birmingham.

We invite you to look at the painting while listening. Please click on the artist name to open a link to an external webpage of the painting.

Edgar Degas was a French painter, draftsman, sculptor, and printmaker, born in Paris in 1834. Degas received formal training at the École des Beaux-Arts, where he absorbed the classical tradition, studying the old masters with particular admiration for Ingres, whose emphasis on line and structure left a lasting mark on his work. Although often associated with Impressionism, Degas always considered himself a realist. He was fascinated by modern urban life and devoted much of his career to observing people at work or rehearsal. His most famous subjects include ballet dancers, laundresses, milliners, café performers, and racehorses—figures captured in moments of movement, concentration, or fatigue rather than idealised beauty. Degas was an innovator in composition, frequently using unexpected viewpoints, cropped figures, and asymmetrical arrangements inspired partly by photography and Japanese prints. He worked across many media, including oil paint, pastel, charcoal, wax, and bronze. In later years, as his eyesight deteriorated, he increasingly turned to pastel and sculpture, modelling expressive, tactile forms. Degas died in Paris in 1917, leaving behind a body of work that bridged classical discipline and modern experimentation, and permanently reshaped how artists depict movement, space, and everyday life.

Podcast content and founders: David Johnson and Harry Baxter

Producer: Ian Rattray

Audio production: Clear Voice Enterprises.org

Our thanks to the Courtauld Gallery and their staff for their co-opperation and access to the described art works.