Four Jockeys

Dated by the museum to about 1889, when the racecourse — like the ballet studio — was one of the subjects Degas returned to again and again, and painted on board rather than canvas, as many of his smaller studies are. The museum records the artist’s own subject term for the picture, “jockeys”. It belonged to Paul Mellon, B.A. 1929, and after his death in 1999 to his wife, Rachel Lambert Mellon; it entered the gallery with the Mellon bequest in 2014 and hangs in the European galleries.