The Jockey

The Jockey is a significant print created by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in 1899. This impressive work is a lithograph printed on delicate China paper, demonstrating the artist’s mastery of the graphic arts late in his career. A central figure of Post-Impressionism, Toulouse-Lautrec often chronicled the vibrant social life of Paris during the Belle Époque, but he also turned his eye toward the spectacle of sports and leisure, particularly the burgeoning culture surrounding horse racing.

In this piece, Toulouse-Lautrec captures the tense atmosphere of a racetrack, focusing intently on the magnificent thoroughbred horses and their riders. The composition emphasizes the high-speed movement and powerful musculature of the horses, contrasting their bulk with the diminutive, brightly uniformed jockeys. The scene is rendered with sparse, active lines and large areas of simplified color, focusing on movement and anticipation rather than narrative detail. This depiction of equine athleticism showcases a dynamic approach that moves beyond the illustrative quality of many earlier works by the artist.

Toulouse-Lautrec utilized the inherent qualities of the lithograph process to achieve bold, simplified forms, a technique highly valued in turn-of-the-century fine art prints and illustration. Classified as a print, the work is highly prized for its technical quality and its representation of modern Parisian leisure culture. This fine impression of The Jockey is housed within the prestigious collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, serving as a primary resource for examining the evolution of late 19th-century graphic arts. Works of this stature, being essential records of the period, are often made available through public domain initiatives to support scholarly study.