Probablement vente publique, Etats-Unis, 1995

Probablement galerie Hopkins Custot, Londres

Collection Gérard Valkier, Pays-Bas

Acquis auprès de ce dernier par l'actuel propriétaire en juillet 2015

Collection Louis Grandchamp des Raux

Paris, Petit Palais, musée des Beaux-Arts de la ville de Paris, Jean-Louis Forain 1852-1931, « La Comédie Parisienne », mars-juin 2011, n°71 reproduit p.242

Nous remercions Madame Florence Valdès-Forain de nous avoir aimablement confirmé que l’œuvre sera incluse au catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre de Jean-Louis Forain en cours de préparation.

Un avis d’inclusion de Madame Florence Valdès-Forain pourra être délivré sur demande et à la charge de l’acquéreur.

Tireless observer of the capital city, Jean-Louis Forain explored the hidden corners of the opera as often as the city scenes of the Grands Boulevards. Alongside Verlaine and Rimbaud, the artist lived the life of a bohemian. The circles of Paris high society like the nightlife in Montmartre were inexhaustible sources of inspiration.

Although Forain illustrated the world of horse racing for the press, he painted only a dozen paintings on this theme. His approach was that of a chronicler who was more interested in the crowds than the racecourse. Forain liked to portray the journalists, the gamblers, the jockeys, the trainers, the elegant women and the demimondaines, offering an unvarnished portrayal of this world, characterised by spheres of influence and power dynamics. The true subject of this work is movement: that of the man leaning towards an elegant young woman in the foreground, no doubt in hopes of seducing her. With an audaciously tight framing of the composition, the artist sketches these two figures with their back to the race, showing, and not without humour, that for Parisian high-society, horseracing was a pretext for romantic encounters. In this pastel Forain shows that he has largely assimilated the lessons of both Degas and Manet. It was, in fact, thanks to the influence of Edgar Degas that Forain took up pastel starting in 1878. This technique was perfectly suited to the visual effect sought by Forain, who faithfully captured the social interactions of modern society.