René Rousseau-Decelle studied with the master of French Academic painting, William Bouguereau, in the waning years of the older artist’s life. It is clear that the young Rousseau-Decelle quickly moved away from the tightly-painted images of French peasant girls and threw himself headlong into the world of the haute bourgeoisie of fin-de-siècle Paris.

Like his master, Rousseau-Decelle found a very commercially successful niche and adhered to that formula throughout his career. He specialized in very large canvases of contemporary crowd-filled scenes, and these were very well-received in the reviews of the various Paris Salons. Racing scenes appear frequently in his oeuvre, but he treated other leisure activities as themes in his large...