OIL PAINTING: A Carriage at the Races, c.1872
Degas's "Carriage at the Races" includes, against a larger view of a fashionable racecourse outside Paris, a small family portrait in the foreground carriage. We see Degas's friends, the Valpinons - the father in the driver's seat, the mother in the back with a parasol, the baby in the nursemaid's lap. A few years later, when the Commune threw Paris into chaos, Degas took up the Valpinons' invitation to stay in their country house until the disorder subsided.