Boasting beaches, casinos and sumptuous hotels, Deauville was one of the most popular summer resorts of Normandy’s Côte Fleurie for the French elite at the turn of the twentieth century. Foremost among these attractions was L’Hippodrome Deauville-La Touques, a race course named for the Touques River that separates the city from the equally fashionable Trouville-sur-Mer. Each summer, aristocrats and locals alike flocked to Deauville-La Touques for the excitement of the races.

Born and raised in Le Havre, just across the Crique de Rouen from Deauville, Raoul Dufy began to paint the harbors and cityscapes of northern France from an early age. Dufy left school at the age of 14, working as an inspector of foreign ships importing coffee from South America before setting his sights on becoming an artist. In addition to his work as a painter, Dufy’s pursuits as a printmaker, book illustrator and set designer honed the unique Fauve aesthetic seen in the present work.

Dufy was by no means the first artist to choose the races as his preferred subject. Degas had painted races at the Longchamp course in the Bois de Boulogne throughout the late nineteenth century, marrying his skill as a draftsman with the radical cropping and flattened perspective of Japonisme. Fellow Fauve Kees van Dongen also frequented the elegant resorts of northern France. Dufy’s affinity for brilliant color and swift eye for movement were particularly well suited to the vitality of the races, and he revisited the subject of the race course numerous times, capturing Chantilly, Epsom and Ascot, among many others. The bright shades of green and blue in the present work allude to Dufy’s Fauve roots, while the flattened aesthetic and bold lines showcase his skill as a graphic artist.

While many of the artist’s peers attended the races as much to view the glamorous audience as the sport, this was evidently not the case for Dufy: “Friends who accompanied Dufy on his earliest expeditions to the racecourse in the twenties...all speak of the way in which he was more interested in the horses' and jockeys' colors than he was in the people, smart or otherwise. Gradually, in Dufy's racecourse scenes...everything is again given up to the crisp, jaunty interaction between green turf, red brick buildings, white railings, multi-coloured crowds, green trees against blue sky with sprightly puffs of clouds" (Bryan Robertson, "An Introduction to Raoul Dufy," in Raoul Dufy 1877-1953 (exhibition catalogue), Hayward Gallery, London, 1983, n.p.).