Lets compare several horse images across different times and cultures to see a sampling of the ways that horses have been represented. There are thousands of horse images in art, we will look at a dozen examples.
One of the oldest examples of art, created approximately in 30,000 B.C. are the cave paintings at Chauvet in France. This wall painting showing four horse heads is one of the most striking paintings in the cave.
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Wall painting with Horses, Chauvet Cave, France c-30,000 B.C. |
In Chauvet Cave it doesn't appear that these paintings served a decorative purpose only, but would rather have had a significance, possibly religious. There is no evidence that people lived in the areas where paintings were, but an object that may have been a type of an altar was found there. Were animals seen as gods? Were people recording something that happened such as a hunt or hoping for a successful hunt? Possibly thanking the animals? We may never know, but animal imagery shows up in cave paintings found throughout the world.
The painting of the four horses in the Chauvet Cave overlap, they appear to suggest perspective. Is this a herd of horses? Does it represent one horse running or moving? As we can see there were many animals represented in the painting.
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| Battle of Issus (Alexander the Great and Darius of Persia), Floor mosaic from House of the Faun, Pompeii, National Archeological Museum of Naples |
The Battle of Issus (The Battle between Alexander the Great and Darius of Persia) is the most impressive mosaic in a vast villa in Pompeii filled with them. This mosaic from the House of the Faun contains over one million tesserae and measures 8’10” x 16’8.7” (2.7 x 5.1 m), it is thought to be a copy of an original Greek painting from 310BC.
While the artist may not have been at the battle, they did appear to have studied horses, the horses are portrayed with a good degree of accuracy, a variety of colors and sizes of horses were used along with the animals being shown in so many different positions.
The actual Battle of Issus took place in 333BC, at that time horses had been used in battles for about a thousand years. The horses added to the strength and speed of the military, yet unfortunately horses were also counted among the casualties.
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| Night-Shining White, Han Gan (Chinese, active ca. 742–756), Tang dynasty, ca. 750, Handscroll; ink on paper, Metropolitan Museum of Art In Chinese art horses were often featured, Night-Shining White, painted during the Tang dynasty is a good example of that. this horse belonged to the Emperor Xuanzong Metropolitan Museum of Art website writes this about the work: "With its burning eye, flaring nostrils, and dancing hoofs, the fiery-tempered horse epitomizes Chinese myths about Central Asian "celestial steeds" that "sweated blood" and were actually dragons in disguise." |
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| The Equestrian Statue of Gattemelata, Donatello, 1450, bronze statue Piazza of St. Anthony, Padua, Italy |
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| Monument to Sir John Hawkwood, Uccello, 1436, Duomo of Florence 26'10.8" x 16'10.7" (820 x 515 cm) |
Uccello lived and worked in Florence and during his life created many paintings including his famous Monument to Sir John Hawkwood in the Duomo of Florence. Donatello also lived and worked in Florence at the same time, he is thought of as the father of Italian Renaissance sculpture and worked in a variety of media- stone, marble, bronze and even wood.
Comparing the two side by side they have a lot of similarities, they are positioned on a pedestal atop a high base. The horses and riders are dressed formally and the horses have their front foot raised. Both subjects were condottiere and the works were commissioned in honor of them after they had deceased. In the case of Sir John Hawkwood, when he was promised a life size equestrian portrait after his death in the Duomo of Florence, he assumed it would be a sculpture but a painting was created which would have cost far less.
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| The Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius, 175 A.D., bronze, 13'9" (424 cm) Capitoline Museum, Rome |
Donatello had spent time in Rome in the early 15th century and while there he would have seen the famous bronze Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius, which was an influence on his own work.
Many sculptures such as this were melted down and reused after the Roman empire, but this was believed to have been Constantine and was spared.
This work would continue to influence other equestrian portraits for centuries.
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The Conversion of Saint Paul, Caravaggio (1600-01) Chigi Chapel, Church of Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome |
One of my very favorite paintings is Caravaggio's The Conversion of Saint Paul in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. The image is powerful in its simplicity of design which was not typical of painting at the time. Usually paintings were crowded with many figures, here the message has a greater impact. Caravaggio shows the moment in time when the Roman soldier Saul, hears the voice of God. He is stunned and is knocked from his horse by this powerful moment as he is converted to the Christian, St. Paul. This was criticized for focusing on “the ass of a horse" in a holy painting, but with St. Paul falling towards the viewer and breaking the perceived space of the painting, it is a groundbreaking work of art and another way the artist connects the viewer to the image.
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| The Procession of the Trojan Horse into Troy, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, 1760, The National Gallery, London |
The theme of the Trojan Horse shows up in art history from as far back as the 7th century B.C. The story in Greek mythology is that during the Trojan War between the Greek cities of Troy and Sparta, the Spartans tricked the Trojans into letting their soldiers into the walled city after a years long siege. They did this by creating an enormous horse and filling the horse full of Spartans inside. The Trojans thought the horse was a gift and pulled the horse into the city. Once inside they waited until nightfall and then came out and won the war. Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo paints the scene as he imagined it above.
The Trojan Horse represents cunning and trickery as well as the folly of gullibility. The Trojans unknowingly invited the enemy into their city by believing the Spartans had declared defeat and sailed home and left them a special gift of victory. The theme of the horse again represents power and strength.
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Whistlejacket, George Stubbs, 1762, National Gallery of Art, London 9'6.9" x 8'1" (292 x 246.4 cm) |
Stubbs wrote a book in 1766, The Anatomy of the Horse, which was a groundbreaking text and contained 24 etchings of detailed horse anatomy, skeletons and muscular structures.
The large scale Whistlejacket, in the National Gallery is one of his best known works. Typically a painting of this scale would have shown an important historic or religious event or shown the portrait of nobility. Here Stubbs highlights the beauty of this animal by giving the horse such a large format.
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| Napoleon Crossing the Alps: the Great Saint Bernard Pass, Jacques-Louis David, 1800-1801 |
Napoleon Bonaparte's equestrian portrait while he was crossing the Alps is one of the most famous portraits of him and of the time. By situating himself on a horse he appears much taller than he was, the horse and rider fill the entirety of the composition. The inclusion of a horse changes the composition and adds drama and interest to the narrative as well as providing Napoleon with a sense of grandeur.
The artist, Jacques-Louis David, received the Prix de Rome while studying art in the Royal Academy. This sent him to Rome for five years to study the work of both the ancient Romans and Renaissance and Baroque painters.
While there David would have seen both Caravaggio's The Conversion of Saint Paul and the bronze Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius.
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| The Horse Fair, Rosa Bonheur, 1852-55, Metropolitan Museum of Art |
Bonheur's most well known work may be her later painting, The Horse Fair, painted from 1852-55. In is she paints over a dozen horses ranging in size and color in a variety of poses, many of them galloping around a clearing which served as the main horse market in Paris.
The painting is owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the museum website says of the painting The Horse Fair:
"The artist drew inspiration from George Stubbs, Théodore Gericault, Eugène Delacroix and ancient Greek sculpture: she referred to The Horse Fair as her own "Parthenon frieze."
There is a beauty and strength to the horses that Bonheur paints, she went in person to sketch from life many times while she was working on this painting and her knowledge of the anatomy of the horse is visible here.
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| The End of the Day, Frederic Remington (1861-1909) |
Frederic Remington (1861 – 1909) was an American artist best known for his drawings, paintings and sculptures of the American West. Remington studied art both at Yale University and the Art Students League in New York City. He traveled to Montana and Kansas, where he had a studio for a while. He returned to New York where he worked as a writer and artist. During his life his work was published in over 40 magazines and newspapers. Remington painted and sculpted dozens of horses over the course of his career.
Throughout art history horses have been drawn, painted and sculpted for thousands of years. What are some of your favorite works of art with horses?
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