Horses in art - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...

s have appeared in works of art throughout history, frequently as depictions of the horse in battle

Horses in warfare

The first use of horses in warfare occurred over 5,000 years ago. The earliest evidence of horses ridden in warfare dates from Eurasia between 4000 and 3000 BC. A Sumerian illustration of warfare from 2500 BC depicts some type of equine pulling wagons...

. The horse appears less frequently in modern art partly because the horse is no longer significant either as a mode of transportation or as an implement of war. Most modern representations are of famous contemporary horses, artwork associated with horse racing, or artwork associated with the historic cowboy

Cowboy

A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the vaquero traditions of northern Mexico and became a figure of...

or Native American tradition of the American west. In the United Kingdom depictions of fox hunting

Fox hunting

Fox hunting is an activity involving the tracking, chase, and sometimes killing of a fox, traditionally a red fox, by trained foxhounds or other scent hounds, and a group of followers led by a master of foxhounds, who follow the hounds on foot or on horseback.Fox hunting originated in its current...

and nostalgic rural scenes involving horses continue to be made.

Horses often appear in artworks singly, as a mount for an important person, or in teams, hitched to a variety of horse-drawn vehicle

Horse-drawn vehicle

A horse-drawn vehicle is a mechanized piece of equipment pulled by one horse or by a team of horses. These vehicles typically had two or four wheels and were used to carry passengers and/or a load...

History

The horse appeared in prehistoric cave painting

Cave painting

Cave paintings are paintings on cave walls and ceilings, and the term is used especially for those dating to prehistoric times. The earliest European cave paintings date to the Aurignacian, some 32,000 years ago. The purpose of the paleolithic cave paintings is not known...

s such as those in the Lascaux

Lascaux

Lascaux is the setting of a complex of caves in southwestern France famous for its Paleolithic cave paintings. The original caves are located near the village of Montignac, in the department of Dordogne. They contain some of the best-known Upper Paleolithic art. These paintings are estimated to be...

caves, estimated to be 16,000 years old.

Prehistoric hill figure

Hill figure

A hill figure is a large visual representation created by cutting into a steep hillside and revealing the underlying geology. It is a type of geoglyph usually designed to be seen from afar rather than above. In some cases trenches are dug and rubble made from material brighter than the natural...

s have been carved in the shape of the horse,specifically the Uffington White Horse

Uffington White Horse

The Uffington White Horse is a highly stylised prehistoric hill figure, 110 m long , formed from deep trenches filled with crushed white chalk...

,an example of the tradition of horse carvings upon hill-sides,which having existed for thousands of years continues into the current age.

The equine image was common in ancient Egyptian and Grecian art, more refined images displaying greater knowledge of equine anatomy appeared in Classical Greece

Classical Greece

Classical Greece was a 200 year period in Greek culture lasting from the 5th through 4th centuries BC. This classical period had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire and greatly influenced the foundation of Western civilizations. Much of modern Western politics, artistic thought, such as...

and in later Roman work.

Horse drawn chariots were commonly depicted in ancient works, for example on the Standard of Ur

Standard of Ur

The Standard of Ur is a Sumerian artifact excavated from what had been the Royal Cemetery in the ancient city of Ur .-History:...

circa 2500BC. The Horses of Saint Mark

Horses of Saint Mark

The Triumphal Quadriga or Horses of St Mark's is a set of bronze statues of four horses, originally part of a monument depicting a quadriga , which have been set into the facade of St Mark's Basilica in Venice, northern Italy, since the 13th century.-Origins:The sculptures date from late classical...

are the sole surviving example from Classical Antiquity

Classical antiquity

Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...

of a monumental statue of the Quadriga

Quadriga

A quadriga is a car or chariot drawn by four horses abreast . It was raced in the Ancient Olympic Games and other contests. It is represented in profile as the chariot of gods and heroes on Greek vases and in bas-relief. The quadriga was adopted in ancient Roman chariot racing...

.

The horse was less prevalent in early Christian and Byzantine art, overwhelmed by the dominance of religious themes.

The Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

period starting in the 14th century brought a resurgence of the horse in art. Painters of this period who portrayed the horse included Paolo Uccello

Paolo Uccello

Paolo Uccello , born Paolo di Dono, was an Italian painter and a mathematician who was notable for his pioneering work on visual perspective in art. Giorgio Vasari in his book Lives of the Artists wrote that Uccello was obsessed by his interest in perspective and would stay up all night in his...

, Benozzo Gozzoli

Benozzo Gozzoli

Benozzo Gozzoli was an Italian Renaissance painter from Florence. He is best known for a series of murals in the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi depicting festive, vibrant processions with wonderful attention to detail and a pronounced International Gothic influence.-Apprenticeship:He was born Benozzo di...

, Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...

, Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...

, Raphael

Raphael

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...

, Andrea Mantegna

Andrea Mantegna

Andrea Mantegna was an Italian painter, a student of Roman archeology, and son in law of Jacopo Bellini. Like other artists of the time, Mantegna experimented with perspective, e.g., by lowering the horizon in order to create a sense of greater monumentality...

and Titian

Titian

Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490 – 27 August 1576 better known as Titian was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near...

.

In the Baroque

Baroque

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

era the tradition of equine portraiture was established, with artists such as Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck

Anthony van Dyck

Sir Anthony van Dyck was a Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England. He is most famous for his portraits of Charles I of England and his family and court, painted with a relaxed elegance that was to be the dominant influence on English portrait-painting for the next...

and Diego Velázquez

Diego Velázquez

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period, important as a portrait artist...

portraying regal subjects atop their mounts. Equine sporting art also became established in this era as the tradition of horse racing emerged under Tudor patronage.

The mid 18th century saw the emergence of Romanticism

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

, French artists Théodore Géricault

Théodore Géricault

Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault was a profoundly influential French artist, painter and lithographer, known for The Raft of the Medusa and other paintings...

and Eugène Delacroix

Eugène Delacroix

Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school...

were proponents of this movement and both portrayed the horse in many of their works.

George Stubbs

George Stubbs

George Stubbs was an English painter, best known for his paintings of horses.-Biography:Stubbs was born in Liverpool, the son of a currier and leather merchant. Information on his life up to age thirty-five is sparse, relying almost entirely on notes made by fellow artist Ozias Humphry towards the...

born in 1724 became so associated with his equestrian subjects that he was known as "the horse painter". A childhood interest in anatomy was applied to the horse he spent eighteen months dissecting equine carcasses and had an engraver produce book plates of his studies. These anatomical drawings aided later artists.

Equine sporting art was popular in the 19th century, notable artists of the period being Benjamin Marshall

Benjamin Marshall

Benjamin Marshall was an English sporting and animal painter. He was a follower of George Stubbs and studied under Lemuel Abbott for a short period of time. After 1792, he began painting animals, settling at Newmarket in 1812 near the racetrack. He returned to London in 1825 and died in 1835....

, James Ward

James Ward (artist)

James Ward , R.A., was a painter, particularly of animals, and an engraver.-Biography:Born in London, and younger brother of William Ward the engraver, James Ward was influenced by many people, but his career is conventionally divided into two periods: until 1803, his single greatest influence was...

, Henry Thomas Alken

Henry Thomas Alken

Henry Thomas Alken was an English painter and engraver chiefly known as a caricaturist and illustrator of sporting subjects and coaching scenes. His most prolific period of painting and drawing occurred between 1816 and 1831.-Life:Alken was born on 12 October 1785 in Soho London and baptised on...

, James Pollard

James Pollard

James Pollard was a British painter and aquatint engraver noted for his coach, fox hunting and equine scenes. He was born in what is now the London Borough of Islington, the son of the painter and publisher, Robert Pollard ....

and John Frederick Herring, Sr.

John Frederick Herring, Sr.

John Frederick Herring, Sr. , also known as John Frederick Herring I, was a painter, sign maker and coachman in Victorian England.John F. Herring, Sr. is the painter of the 1848 "Pharoah's Chariot Horses"...

. Horse racing gradually became more established in France and Impressionist painter Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...

painted many early racing scenes. Degas was one of the first horse painters to use photographic references. Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard J. Muybridge was an English photographer who spent much of his life in the United States. He is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion which used multiple cameras to capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible...

's photographic studies of animal motion had a huge influence on equine art as they allowed artists greater understanding of the horses gaits.

Sir Alfred Munnings was an acclaimed painter working in England during the 20th century, he was elected president of the Royal Academy

Royal Academy

The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...

in 1944. He specialised in equine subjects, including horse racing, portraiture and studies of gypsies and rural life.

Military and war

Military art

Military art is a term describing works of art on military themes. The genre of military art is characterized by its subject matter rather than by any specific style or material used. The battle scene is one of the oldest types of art in developed civilizations, as rulers have always been keen to...

often depicts the horse in battle

Horses in warfare

and provides some of the earliest examples of the horse in art, with cavalry

Cavalry

Cavalry or horsemen were soldiers or warriors who fought mounted on horseback. Cavalry were historically the third oldest and the most mobile of the combat arms...

, horse drawn chariot

Chariot

The chariot is a type of horse carriage used in both peace and war as the chief vehicle of many ancient peoples. Ox carts, proto-chariots, were built by the Proto-Indo-Europeans and also built in Mesopotamia as early as 3000 BC. The original horse chariot was a fast, light, open, two wheeled...

s and horse archers all appearing on ancient artifects.

In the medieval period cavalry battles and knight

Knight

A knight was a member of a class of lower nobility in the High Middle Ages.By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior....

s on horseback were portrayed by artists including Paolo Uccello

Paolo Uccello

and Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer

. Uccello's tryptic The Battle of San Romano

The Battle of San Romano

The Battle of San Romano is a set of three paintings by the Florentine painter Paolo Uccello depicting events that took place at the Battle of San Romano between Florentine and Sienese forces in 1432. They are significant as revealing the development of linear perspective in early Italian...

shows various stages of a battle. Durer's engraving of "Knight, Death and the Devil", 1513 shows a military subject combined with allegorical theme.

Sir Alfred Munnings was appointed as a war artist

War artist

A war artist depicts some aspect of war through art; this might be a pictorial record or it might commemorate how "war shapes lives." War artists have explored a visual and sensory dimension of war which is often absent in written histories or other accounts of warfare.- Definition and context:A...

during World War I, he painted both the Canadian Cavalry Brigade and the Canadian Forestry Corps stationed in France. He considered his experiences with the Canadian units to have been among the most rewarding events of his life.

Elizabeth Thompson

Elizabeth Thompson

Elizabeth Southerden Thompson, Lady Butler was a British painter, one of the few female painters to achieve fame for history paintings, especially military battle scenes, at the end of that tradition...

, known as Lady Butler, was famed for her military art, especially "Scotland Forever" featuring a dramatic charge by the Royal Scots Greys.

For a large and complex 20th century war painting in which a horse is the central dramatic figure, see Guernica

Guernica (painting)

Guernica is a painting by Pablo Picasso. It was created in response to the bombing of Guernica, Basque Country, by German and Italian warplanes at the behest of the Spanish Nationalist forces, on 26 April 1937, during the Spanish Civil War...

by Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

Horse racing

Thoroughbred racing was an inspiration for Romantic and Impressionist artists of the 19th century. Théodore Géricault

Théodore Géricault

Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault was a profoundly influential French artist, painter and lithographer, known for The Raft of the Medusa and other paintings...

painted the Epsom Derby

Epsom Derby

The Derby Stakes, popularly known as The Derby, internationally as the Epsom Derby, and under its present sponsor as the Investec Derby, is a Group 1 flat horse race in Great Britain open to three-year-old thoroughbred colts and fillies...

in 1821 during his stay in England. The Impressionist era coincided with the development of racing in France, Manet

Manet

-MANET as an abbreviation:*MANET is a mobile ad hoc network, a self-configuring mobile wireless network.*MANET database or Molecular Ancestry Network, bioinformatics database-People with the surname Manet:*Édouard Manet, a 19th-century French painter....

, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa or simply Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, and illustrator, whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of fin de siècle Paris yielded an œuvre of exciting, elegant and provocative images of the modern...

all acquired a lasting fascination with racing. Manet showing the excitement and action of the race and Degas concentrating more on the moments before the start. Degas was intensely interested in Muybridge

Eadweard Muybridge

's photographs of the horse in motion, he copied them in chalk and pencil and used them for reference in his later work.

Generations of artists before Muybridge had portrayed the horse in a 'rocking horse' gallop with the horse portrayed with both front legs extended forward and both hind legs extended rearwards. Much more realistic representations were possible after the event of photography and Muybridge's work but that did not necessarily lead to the impression of movement in the artwork. Luard writing in 1921 compares the running action of an animal with the run and rhythm of an air in music, but the instantaneous moment recorded by a photograph as a detached chord with little meaning or context.

George Stubbs

George Stubbs

and Alfred Munnings

Alfred Munnings

Sir Alfred James Munnings KCVO, PRA was known as one of England's finest painters of horses, and as an outspoken enemy of Modernism...

have both left a vast body of work involving the racehorse.

In the 20th century, much of the artwork by John Skeaping

John Skeaping

John Rattenbury Skeaping, RA was an English sculptor and equine painter.Born in South Woodford, Essex, Skeaping studied at Goldsmith's College, London, and later at the Royal Academy. He was the first husband of the sculptor Barbara Hepworth, with whom he exhibited during the 1920s...

involved the racing scene, including life-size bronzes of Hyperion

Hyperion (horse)

Hyperion was a British bred Thoroughbred, a dual classic winner and an outstanding sire. Owned by Edward Stanley, 17th Earl of Derby, Hyperion won £29,509 during his career - a considerable sum at the time. His victories included the Epsom Derby and St...

and Brigadier Gerard and watercolours of race course action.

Hunting

Hunting scenes have been a common subject matter for equestrian painters. Specialists in fox hunting

Fox hunting

subjects include Cecil Aldin

Cecil Aldin

Cecil Charles Windsor Aldin was a British artist and illustrator best known for his paintings and sketches of animals, sports, and rural life.-Life and work:...

and Lionel Edwards

Lionel Edwards

Lionel Edwards was a British artist who specialized in painting horses and other aspects of British country life. He is best known for his hunting scenes but also painted pictures of horse racing, shooting and fishing...

Rural/working life

Lucy Kemp-Welch

Lucy Kemp-Welch was a British painter who specialized in painting working horses. She is best known for her illustrations to the 1915 edition of Anna Sewell's Black Beauty...

was well known for her depiction of wild and working horses in the landscape.

The American West

Artwork associated with the historic cowboy

Cowboy

or Native American tradition of the American west naturally includes many equine subjects. Artists of the American West include Frederic Remington

Frederic Remington

Frederic Sackrider Remington was an American painter, illustrator, sculptor, and writer who specialized in depictions of the Old American West, specifically concentrating on the last quarter of the 19th century American West and images of cowboys, American Indians, and the U. S...

and C.M. Russell who are known for their paintings of equine subjects. Remington was one of the first American artists to illustrate the true gait of the horse in motion (along with Thomas Eakins

Thomas Eakins

Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator...

), as validated by the famous sequential photographs of Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard Muybridge

.
Remington also captured equine drama in his bronze sculptures, his first, Bronco Buster

Bronco Buster

The Bronco Buster is a sculpture made of bronze copyrighted in 1895 by American artist Frederic Remington. It portrays a rugged Western frontier cowboy character fighting to stay aboard a rearing, plunging bronco, with a stirrup swinging free, a quirt in one hand and a fistful of mane and reins in...

(Williams College Museum of Art

Williams College Museum of Art

The Williams College Museum of Art is a teaching museum located in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It is a department of Williams College. The museum's mission is to "advance learning through lively and innovative approaches to art for the students of Williams College and communities beyond the...

), was a critical and commercial success.

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