The romantic and passionate soul of Delacroix has nothing to envy to that of his friend Géricault whom he met shortly after returning to the Beaux-Arts. His horses will make the color sing and furiously unleash the movement. They are powerful, they explode with vitality. Their anatomy, often imprecise, sometimes inaccurate, proves, if necessary, that ignoring the requirements of resemblance, it is a great lyricism that dictated the brush strokes of Delacroix and the fusion of his colors.
THE ART OF THE HORSE
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The gallery is comprised of representations of the horse primarily on canvas with one photograph.
The “Piebald” Horse , Paulus Potter, about 1650–1654, Владелец коллекции: The J. Paul Getty Museum.
Paulus Potter’s the “Piebald” Horse conveys the strength, power and personality of the horse. This horse appears to be listening and aware of something off in the distance. His head his up, his ears are back and his body is tightly drawn. There’s a great deal of detail here from the red snip on the nose, the dapples of his coat and the muscle lines of his legs. He’s the focal point of the work and towers over the surrounding landscape.
A Grey Horse , van Dyck, Sir Anthony, Before 1641, Владелец коллекции: Dulwich Picture Gallery.
Van Dyck’s A Grey Horse is an oil painting that was done on paper mounted on a wood panel. This technique creates texture to the work and adds dimension. The horse appears to almost be moving off the canvas. The effect is an eye-catching, elegant portrayal of the horse.
Horse Frightened by a Lion , George Stubbs, 1770, Владелец коллекции: Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
George Stubbs created an emotional piece with Horse Frightened by a Lion. The emphasis of the white horse against against a dark landscape with the lion a small, but ominous presence definitely evokes emotion. The work was inspired by a trip to Rome Stubbs made in 1754. This work was one of the first pieces of the time showing an animal in terror, which started a trend with other artists of the time.
Instant Landscape- horse #3 , Kim, Nampyo, 2009, Владелец коллекции: Korean Art Museum Association.
Nampyo Kim is known for creating statements with the absurd that allow for a story to be told. In Horse #3 a waterfall emits from the back of a zebra. There’s texture to the horse’s coat as he regards the smooth zebra, building and water in front of him. The use of white space allow the horse to stand apart as a dominating presence.
Lord Abergavenny’s Dark Bay Carriage Horse with a Terrier , Thomas Gooch, 1750–1802, British, 1785, Владелец коллекции: Yale Center for British Art.
This piece by Thomas Gooch is an elegant depiction of a horse and terrier. Dogs and horses often appear in paintings together. In this instance the two are balanced in their regard for each other. The terrier, although small, is a prominent partner to the large horse with his light color contrasted to the muted tones in the majority of the piece.
Jeju Horse , unknown, 1900s, Владелец коллекции: Jeju National Museum.
This photograph of a horse by an unknown photographer depicts both the strength and vulnerability of the horse. It’s chestnut color is striking against the boulders and snowy landscape. He’s both turned into the wind, but appears to be looking toward the photographer. This creates a feeling of participating by the viewer in what’s depicted in print.
A Bay Horse in a Field , Edmund Bristow, 1787–1876, British, ca. 1825, Владелец коллекции: Yale Center for British Art.
This oil on canvas by Edmund Bristow presents a majestic bay as the prominent figure in a landscape. The horse’s power is felt not only because he’s the center of the piece, but by his size in comparison to the green fields. His body reaches into the light blue sky which also reinforces his commanding presence.
Blue Horse I , Marc, Franz, 1911, Владелец коллекции: Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau.
Marc Franz creates a harmonious depiction of the horse in his piece, Blue Horse. He uses primary and secondary colors in the surrounding hills and plant life. These are in balance with the various shades of blue hues of the horse. In addition, the curved lines used in horse and landscape create a feeling of unity that’s pleasant to view.
Head of a Grey Arabian Horse , Martin Theodore Ward, 1799–1874, British, between 1820 and 1830, Владелец коллекции: Yale Center for British Art.
Martin Theodore Ward’s Head of a Grey Arabian Horse is striking. The grey color of the arab both stands out and blends into the brown background creating contrast and a sense of movement in the piece. There’s texture here in the prominent veins on the horses muzzle and neck that contrast with the soft flowing nature of the forelock and mane. It’s the essence of a softness combined with power and fear that the artist has captured that make his piece memorable.
Landscape of Öland, gypsies on a horse , Nils Kreuger, 1885, Владелец коллекции: Malmö Konstmuseum.
Landscape of Öland, Gypsies on a Horse is done in an impressionistic style. The artist, Nils Krueger, was inspired by Gauguin, which is definitely evident here. The terrain seems to be flying under the feet of the rider and horses. The color choices of black and browns for the rider and horses is in definite contrast to the muted and much lighter color choices of the road and surrounding landscape.
Организаторы
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The first paintings of horses
Adapting their drawings to the relief of the wall, prehistoric men have left us a considerable number of horses whose gaits and morphological details are of an astonishing precision. The thinness of the limbs, which suggests speed in the race, is contrasted with a stocky body, a thick and short neck with a bristly mane; the coat varies from orange yellow to mouse-gray: these are the main characteristics of the primitive horse.
Mixed with the ashes of the fireplace, the manganous earth gave the black, the iron oxide the red and the lime the white. The colors were then mixed with animal fat and applied by hand or blown through a hollow bone.
If the most beautiful horses in cave art are in the caves of Altamira and Castillo in Spain, it is in those of Lascaux that they are represented in the greatest number: they are counted by hundreds, of all sizes, isolated or in herds.
The domestication of the horse will offer to the cave paintings, next to the hunting scenes, figurations of horses mounted and harnessed.
To describe all the horses that galloped on the bas-reliefs, friezes, basins and funerary urns or immense frescoes of Antiquity is a Titan’s work! However, we can see in these representations an evolution due to the use of the horse mounted or harnessed. Concerning the gallop, the Assyrians and Egyptians represented their horses in only two attitudes: the bent gallop and the extended gallop. Greek art added the canter which, more collected, differs from the rearing pattern only by the lifting of a hind leg. For the anecdote, we will quote Apelles, a great Greek painter who represented “a canter so admirable that the horses passing near it whinnied.” During a visit to Ephesus, the city where the artist lived, Alexander saw one of his portraits executed by Apelles but, finding it not very resembling, he gave it only a faint praise. At the same moment, one of the horses of his suite neighed with vigor. Upset by the king’s remark, the painter could not help but speak: “Lord, this horse knows more about painting than you!”
The Middle Ages will see the appearance of a new form of cavalry and the beginnings of horse-drawn vehicles as a means of transportation. Riding a chanson de geste horse will be the exclusive privilege of the nobility, praised as much in the novels of chivalry and as in the multitude of illuminations that will adorn the manuscripts. It was not until later that the pictorial representation of the horse took on a real dimension.
The Renaissance, a great turning point for the horse in painting
With the same meticulousness as the miniaturists who preceded them, painters began to study the anatomy of their subjects and to take an interest in space. The equestrian representations will come to life and will be tinged with a hint of realism while exploiting the thousand riches offered by the brand new technique of oil painting. Experts in the art, we can cite – among others – the Van Eyck brothers for Flemish painting, Gozzoli, Piero della Francesca and Uccello in Italy. Scenes of battles and portraits follow one another to the dynamic rhythm of the horses, in a setting still abounding in sophisticated details. Note that horses are no longer systematically represented from the front, profile or back. The painters began to seek depth through postures and movements that allowed them to fill the space. Little by little, the concern for historical reality and detail seems to fade away in favor of this search for space. The Gothic influence will gradually disappear.
Although he is better known as a medalist, Pisanello can be considered the precursor of this new genre. Apart from drawings, watercolors and a few fragments of frescoes, there is nothing left to testify to his immense talent. As an equestrian, he studied horses and the equestrian world in detail. His frescoes and portraits of the great men of the Italian courts show an admirable gift for observation and a sense of reality, at a time when the Renaissance style was just emerging.
There is no doubt that Pisanello’s work influenced Leonardo da Vinci.
As in the water or the sky, Vinci tamed the movement, dynamics, and energy of horses. His observations go to the dissection of the slightest muscle, to the meticulous study of gestures, to the extreme morphological precision. He wants to add “soul” to the movement. With a mathematician’s mind, he juggled with proportions and beauty. Vinci placed his first horses in the Adoration of the Magi, an unfinished canvas since the Florentine genius left for Milan, hired as a musician by the Sforza family. He will present himself there with a lute of his own invention, the shape of which was none other than that of a horse’s skull…
Was this the result of the vagaries of life or the artist’s casual state of mind? Vinci never saw any of his equestrian projects come to fruition: whether it was the monumental equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza on which he worked for ten years or the Florentine fresco he shared the commission with Michelangelo – The Battle of Anghiari – of which all we have left (apart from the copy made by Rubens) are his sketches to imagine the energy and ardor of his horses in battle. But we will forgive him this emptiness as he left so many teachings to art, science, and human reflection.
We are also in the era of great equestrian portraits. The dignity, the presence that the horse confers to the one who rides it does not escape the sovereigns and the nobles, concerned about their image and the power that they represent.
The equestrian portraits of François I by Jean Clouet are a fine example of the genre, even if the proportions of the horse are less successful than the king’s costume and the details of the harness. In the painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the king rides a black horse and on his caparison are the monograms H for the king, D for Diane de Poitiers, and C for Queen Marie-Christine. The painting in the Louvre represents him in the same posture, on an Isabelle horse, with a more sober harness.
Under the influence of Rubens, the equestrian portrait will be marked by the transition to Baroque art: the round and elegant silhouettes of Iberian horses will emerge. Long, silky, and wavy manes, floating tails, impetuous gaits and, on the canvas, a diagonal arrangement of the subjects.
Whether at the Spanish court, where Velázquez immortalized the royal family, Titian, and his solemn portrait of Charles V at the battle of Mühlberg or Van Dyck, whose portrait of Charles I is a model of refinement, the days of fixed positions and flat structures were over. But, despite the innovations brought by Vinci in terms of perspective and, later, the research of Baroque painters, the equestrian portrait will remain for a long time very conventional and without great innovation.
Horse and painting: landscapes and scenes of everyday life
Without abandoning the courts of the lords, the battlefields and the themes of mythology, the painters will also focus on scenes of everyday life: work in the fields, travelers on horseback, carriages on the road, horses running free, riders at the riding school or equestrian entertainment outside… The Flemish experts will be the precursors of this new genre whose vogue will extend until the 18th century. Their compositions with precise lines, bathed in a great luminosity but all of softness and poetry, will also consider space, volumes and
the construction of the whole. Paulus Potter, considered as the leader of the genre, was attached to this realism, full of refinement, elegance, and delicacy.
The piebald horse, painted in 1653, whose immobility contrasts singularly with the vivacity of its gaze is a perfect model of the genre. Potter’s work will influence many artists, such as Van de Velde, Van Lear or Wouwerman, and will lay the foundations of animal painting in the following centuries.
In the eighteenth century, George Stubbs undoubtedly won the prize for animal painting to which nothing predestined him other than his immense passion for horses. It is thus as a perfect autodidact and without the slightest artistic training that he became interested, first, in the anatomy of the horse.
For years he isolated himself in a secluded farm in Lincolnshire and meticulously dissected numerous horse corpses, studying the slightest particularities of their morphology. He recorded the results of his observations in his Anatomy of the Horse, a work that is now very rare. He also started an album of comparative anatomy and published a book on the origin of the main racehorses. Mennessier de La Lance rightly cites him as “an English anatomist and painter”.
Besides his scientific friends who praised the accuracy and the quality of his drawings, the amateurs of painting discovered a talented artist who knew how to combine with an immense talent the rigor of the scientific observation and the aesthetic and artistic sensitivity. “Nature is and will always be superior to art”, he used to say, but this did not prevent him from embellishing reality with that poetry full of warmth, gentleness, and emotion that he mastered so well.
Stubbs’ horses are always in the foreground, against a plain background or a serene landscape; they could stand on their own! This was the case for a famous chestnut: Whistlejacket that Stubbs painted in 1762 and which is said to be an “unfinished” commission for an equestrian portrait of George III. Lord Rockingham is said to have commissioned three painters for this portrait: a portrait painter for the king, a landscape painter for the setting and Stubbs for the horse. When Stubbs returned his work, Rockingham was so impressed by the quality of the work that he decided to keep the painting as we know it: this impetuous chestnut with such perfect lines.
The emerging craze for horse racing and the growing fame of English thoroughbreds offered Stubbs a subject that he exploited extensively. He became one of the most renowned painters of the sporting life, but he did not neglect his peaceful scenes of naked horses or horses in pasture, in which he excelled, nor the commissions for portraits of breeders, owners and the cracks of the turf that he honored so well.
