1903 Tour de France - Original Cycling Oil Painting by Christopher Watson

This painting is based on a historic photograph taken at the conclusion of the final stage of the first Tour de France in 1903. I wanted to zoom out from the original image and include a quiet tip-of-the-hat to the unnamed photographer who captured the moment.

The two central riders are Léon Georget on the left and Maurice Garin on the right. Garin had just completed the final 471 km stage from Nantes to Paris, taking the victory after 18 hours and 9 minutes in the saddle.

The riders left Nantes in darkness and rode through the night on dirt roads, crushed stone, wagon ruts, and mud. Their bicycles weighed roughly 18 kilos, or about 40 pounds, with steel frames, wooden rims, and fixed gears. Riders were their own mechanics.

The official stage ended at Ville-d’Avray, just west of Paris. From there, the riders continued to the Parc des Princes velodrome, where they were received by a crowd of roughly 20,000 spectators.

What draws me to this image is the fact that the Tour had no mythology yet. No established tradition. It was still an experiment, created to help sell newspapers. They were inventing the rules as they went, riding through the dark across France, and somehow we are still following in their tracks more than a century later.

This is painting number 11 in my ongoing VeloPaintings series, a collection of 50 works focused on the golden age of cycling from roughly 1890 to 1930.