The racecourse was as natural a subject for Jean Dufy as the harbour or the circus — a world of movement, colour and spectacle that his particular technique was made to capture. This steeplechase is painted at full stretch: horses and riders mid-jump over the fence, the crowd a flickering frieze of marks along the rail, the whole scene laid out across a brilliant green ground beneath a flat, intense blue sky. Nothing is laboured. Everything moves. Look at how the horses are painted. They are not described — they are indicated, each one a rapid assembly of marks that the eye assembles into form at a slight distance: a white body here, a jockey in red silks there, the dark calligraphic lines of legs and reins drawn with a confidence that borders on shorthand. The fence at the centre of the composition is rendered in the same rapid white strokes, the geometry of the obstacle contrasting with the fluid energy of the horses clearing it. The crowd to the right is a cluster of coloured marks — blue, red, yellow, brown — just enough to suggest figures without fixing them. The whole canvas has the quality of a memory of an afternoon at the races rather than a record of one: the feeling of it, the colour and excitement, rather than the fact. This work is included in the catalogue raisonné of Jean Dufy by Jacques Bailly, Volume 1, page 248, No. B442 — the definitive scholarly record of his output. Its provenance is equally distinguished: it passed through Wally Findlay Galleries in Palm Beach before entering the collection of Alvin N. Haas, one of the most significant private collectors of French modern art in the United States. A work documented in the catalogue raisonné and carrying a collection history of this quality represents the most secure possible acquisition in the secondary market. Jean Dufy (1888–1964) was born in Le Havre and spent his career in Paris among a circle that included Braque, Picasso and Apollinaire. His work is held in the Musée National d'Art Moderne at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Albertina in Vienna