Coinciding with the wider establishment of horse racing in France in the nineteenth century, artists such as Edouard Manet, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and Edgar Degas developed a lasting fascination with this subject as the ideal manifestation of the interaction of form and motion. Nearly seventy years later Brianchon’s ‘Races at Auteuil’ harkens back to this proliferation of works depicting what was at that time France’s most popular spectator sport. 

In the present work the vibrant colours of the jockey’s silks inform a reduced colour palette that allows for a wonderful sense of balance and refinement to underscore the work. In the intensified colours and simplified forms we can see the influence of Henri Matisse and the artists of the Nabis movement, particularly Edouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard. 

Brianchon has organized flattened patches of vibrant colour in this work into a beautiful, harmonious composition that recalls their desire for pure aesthetic representation. Drawing from this variety of sources, both historical and contemporary, Brianchon creates a visual style that gained him great acclaim and numerous invitations to exhibit in the Salon d’Automne beginning in 1919 

Brianchon’s reputation as one of the most respected painters of his generation led to the British Government requesting his attendance at Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, to document the ceremony. At the age of 23, he was appointed a member of the committee of the Salon d’Automne and, in 1934, represented France at the Venice Biennale and won the Carnegie Prize. Between 1956 and 1975 he had a series of solo exhibitions at Arthur Tooth & Sons in London, and at David Findlay Galleries in New York. In 1962 he also had a retrospective at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, in Neuchâtel in Switzerland, and in 1972 an exhibition at the Yoshii Gallery in Tokyo entitled Hommage à Brianchon.