Races at Longchamp

Racehorses thunder straight toward the viewer down the Longchamp track in a blur of legs and dust, the crowd a smear of color along the rails, the whole composition charged with speed and modern immediacy. Manet abandons the traditional side-on view of horses for this headlong, almost photographic rush. Now in the Art Institute of Chicago, Races at Longchamp captures the fashionable spectacle of the Parisian turf with bold, summary strokes - a thoroughly modern subject seized in a thoroughly modern way, motion itself made the true subject of the painting.