Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas, 'Promenade beside the Sea', about 1860
About the work
Overview
In this unassuming painting the young Degas used the motif of the horse and rider which would become of central importance for his art. The site is the Bay of Naples. A male and female rider dressed in black and wearing top hats gallop away from the viewer around the edge of the bay towards a distant row of hills jutting into the sea.
Although the sketch seems to have been made quickly from life, the setting and the figures were both studied in separate drawings before being brought together here.
Key facts
Details
- Full title
- Promenade beside the Sea
- Artist
- Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
- Artist dates
- 1834 - 1917
- Date made
- about 1860
- Medium and support
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 22.5 × 32.5 cm
- Acquisition credit
- The Gere Collection, on long-term loan to The National Gallery, London
- Inventory number
- L819
- Location
- Room 39
- Image copyright
- The Gere Collection, on long-term loan to The National Gallery, London, © Private collection 2000. Used by permission
- Collection
- Main Collection
About this record
If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.
Images
More works by Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
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A woman sits beside a bath, drying her hair. She pitches forward, one arm raised to rub the towel on her neck, the other reaching back awkwardly, perhaps to steady herself or perhaps to grasp the towel on the back of the chair. The ungainly but authentic-looking pose makes it easy to believe that...
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This is an early example of Degas’s cafe or cafe-concert scenes. Cafes were an important part of Parisian social life, and also provided artists with a rich source of visual spectacle, characters and ‘types’.Two men seated at a corner table examine a newspaper. The figure facing us points to an a...
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The dancers in Degas’s painting are clouded in a mist of tulle, but two striking heads of red hair seem to anchor the blurred forms moving in space. Arms and legs curve and stretch, delicate white skirts toss and sway. The white tutus depicted here are the practice dress worn by the younger dance...
A maid combs the hair of a girl who has been swimming; her bathing suit is stretched out on the ground to dry. Other objects – two parasols, a basket and a summer bonnet – are scattered around. A family group (some members wrapped in towels) is leaving the shoreline, as other people stroll in the...
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The Cirque Fernando was built in 1875 near the Place Pigalle in Paris, close to where Degas lived. He saw Miss La La perform there several times. Born Anna Albertine Olga Brown (1858-1945), she was a mixed-race circus performer famous for her feats of strength. Olga is especially known as the inv...
Elena Carafa was Degas’s first cousin. Her mother, Stefanina, the Duchessa Montejasi-Cicerale, was the youngest sister of Degas’s father. Like many members of Degas’s family they lived in Naples, which Degas himself returned to in the winter of 1873–4, when he accompanied his dying father there....
Princess Pauline Sander (1836–1921) was the wife of Prince Richard Metternich, the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador at the court of Napoleon III from 1860 to 1871. Known as the ‘ambassadress of pleasure’, she was a glamorous figure in Parisian high society during the Second Empire. A pioneer of fashio...
In the late 1890s a number of dance troupes from Eastern Europe visited Paris and performed at the Moulin Rouge, the Folies-Bergère, the Casino de Paris and at a brasserie near Degas’s Montmartre home. This pastel may have been one of three showing ‘dancers in Russian costume’ that Degas showed a...
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The painting illustrates a passage from the Life of Lycurgus by the Roman historian Plutarch, which describes how Spartan girls were ordered to engage in exercise – including running, wrestling and throwing the discus and javelin – and to challenge boys. However, this may be a scene of courtship...
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