From the beginning of the 1920s Dufy visited racecourses frequently, together with the leading creators of fashion such as Paul Poiret and Bianchini. It was Poiret who urged Dufy to study the smart clothes of fashionable ladies who came to the racecourses to be seen. Dufy first painted a paddock in 1913 in which he revealed a concern with structure and composition to the detriment of colour values. However, friends who accompanied Dufy on his expeditions to racecourses in the twenties recalled that at this time he became more interested in the colours of the horses and jockeys, their movement and in the animation of the spectators in the crowd.

He executed numerous paintings and watercolours at such courses as Deauville, Longchamp, Chantilly, Epsom and Ascot, of the silhouettes of figures in the spectator area, the horses captured in mid-race and of paddock scenes. These works showed his attention to detail as well as the special atmosphere of the racecourses and the brightly dressed crowds of spectators. At the same time Dufy became an unwitting chronicler of society by painting these scenes. Jacques de Laprade said that, "Dufy portrayed twenty-five years of our amusements with the same urbane humour and magnificent sense of draughtsmanship" (M. Brion (Intro.), Raoul Dufy, Paintings and Watercolours, London, 1958, p. 18).