Signed and dated 'GUSTAV ADOLF MOSSA / NICIENSIS PINXIT. MCMVI ' lower left.

Provenance: Paris, Hotel Drouot, Cornette de Saint Cyr, February 28, 1977;
Versailles, Me Blache, May 2, 1982; London, Christie's, 1 December 1989, n° 1032;
Piccadily Gallery, London; Barry Friedman Ltd, New York, see the label on the back;
London, Sotheby's, 14 November 2007, n° 285;
Private collection, Italy

Exhibitions: "Gustav Adolf Mossa, l'oeuvre symboliste, 1903-1918", Paris, 19 June - 27 September 1992, repr. p. 32.

Literature: M. Gibson, "Symbolism", Cologne 1995, p. 12, repr .;
J. Forneris, "Résonances niçoises dans l'oeuvre symboliste de Gustav-Adolf Mossa 1900-1911", in 'Nice historique', n ° 3, 2009, p. 185-186, repr. coloured;
S. Lombart and J. R. Soubiran, "Gustav Adolf Mossa, Catalogue Raisonné des oeuvres symbolistes", Paris 2010, p. 52, n ° H26.

Son of art (his father Alexis Mossa was an artist of the Nice Carnival and then curator of the City Museum), Gustav-Adolf Mossa belongs to the second generation of Symbolists, a movement from which he undoubtedly draws inspiration and suggestions to develop an extremely personal imaginary. His production is concentrated between the years 1901 and 1918 and is mainly made up of works on paper, characterized by his neat line inspired by the world of illustrations and advertising "affiches" of the beginning of the century: rare are his works on canvas, central works in his artistic path and in the understanding of his poetics. Mossa combines the extraordinary knowledge of myth and poetry, especially that of Charles Baudelaire, with the symbolist aesthetics and the grotesque imagery of Carnival, in an osmosis whose result is both dreamlike and disturbing. The archetypal images of the biblical or Greek myth (Judith and Holofernes, Oedipus and the Sphinx, etc.) are reinterpreted in a contemporary key and often the figure of the "femme fatal" is central, modern and cruel protagonist of many of his works. In the present painting, one of the artist's masterpieces, all these themes are present: the jockey, like a modern Oedipus, appears bewitched, almost mocked by the towering and luxurious figure of the lady-sphinx, who dominates him with his sole presence and the imposition of the finger, against the backdrop of a gloomy racecourse, in a "masquerade" of life dreamlike and brutal at the same time.