The 1821 Derby at Epsom

Géricault's The 1821 Derby at Epsom depicts the famous horse race with all four horses shown in the extended 'flying gallop' — all legs off the ground simultaneously — that nineteenth-century painters depicted before high-speed photography revealed the actual gait of galloping horses. The convention was visually false but dynamically convincing, capturing the sensation of speed through the horses' stretched bodies. Géricault painted the canvas in England while visiting after the Raft of the Medusa's London exhibition, and the painting brings his French academic training to bear on a quintessentially English sporting subject.

The low viewpoint and dark, stormy sky create a dramatic sense of speed and power. Géricault's rendering of the horses' musculature and the jockeys' straining postures demonstrates his unrivaled understanding of equine form and motion.