GUY PÈNE DU BOIS1958)

The present work likely depicts a scene at the Saratoga Race Track. The artist spent a great deal of time in the area ahead of his 1937 Treasury Relief Art Project commission for the Saratoga Springs, New York Post Office, for which he painted his monumentally scaled, two-panel work Saratoga in Racing Season. During the August 1936 racing season, the year the present work was painted, the famous underdog Sea Biscuit won the Saratoga Handicap. The couple depicted in the painting may be the artist's daughter Yvonne and her fiancé, Houghton Field Furlong.