- Breeding
- Horse Breeding, Part 1: The Estrous Cycle
- Should You Go Into Horse Breeding?
- The Missing Equine Link: How the Modern Horse Came to Be
- Buying a Horse
- Top 3 Ways Using Horse Classifieds Can Save You Money
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- The Benefits and Drawbacks of an Indoor Arena
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- A Look at Horse Feed
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- You’ve Got the Right Feed, Now What?: Proper Feeding Practices
- Horse Grooming
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- Ask Chelsie Natural Horsemanship - What Does It Mean To Disengage My Horse?
- It's Hard to Get Back to Basics When You Haven't Been There To Start!
- Horses & History
- The Missing Equine Link: How the Modern Horse Came to Be
- Top 5 Strange and Unusual Horses
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- Nearly $7 Million Generated Annually for the District of Columbia
Horses in Art: An Abridged History
03/23/2009
The very first work of art was painted on the Lascaux caves of southern France over 16,000 years ago. The subject? Men and horses. Since then, horse pictures have played an important roll in art throughout history, a symbol of military might, work, progre
The very first work of art was painted on the Lascaux caves of southern France over 16,000 years ago. The subject? Men and horses. Since then, horse pictures have played an important roll in art throughout history, a symbol of military might, work, progress, pride, and nostalgia.
A figure in prehistoric art, horse pictures were also common in ancient Greek and Egyptian cultures. The Sumerian piece Standard of Ur (2500BC) was a wooden box that used inlaid stones to depict a funeral seen. The Standard’s horse pictures show equines pulling chariots and stomping on enemies, a symbol of Sumerian power.
In Classical art of the Greeks and Romans, horse pictures were used in frescos and sculptures to represent culture and civilization. During the Roman creation myth, Neptune was thought to bring forth horses out of the ocean, a symbol for bringing order out of chaos. In many vases, horse pictures were meant to represent Mars, the god of war, and were often used in religious sacrifice.
As Christianity spread throughout Europe during the early Christian and Byzantine periods, horse pictures were much less prominent in Western art. Since horse pictures had typically been a way of exalting civilization or warfare, they had little relevance in the heavily religious work of this period. In Persia and the Arab countries, however, horse pictures were another matter entirely. Because ancient Persia rose to prominence with the “superhorse” breed Nisean, horse pictures appeared in Persian textiles, decorations, and illustrations as a symbol of pride, princeliness, and power. And since only princes and aristocrats could own horses, horse pictures were often artistic shorthand for wealth and pedigree.
As the Persian notion of the nobility of the horse began to travel to Europe during the Renaissance, the Western art world once again turned to horse pictures to portray symbols of civilization. Now, however, civilization meant the money market, trades and banks, so horse pictures were imbued with a sense of material wealth and financial success.
With the exception of da Vinci’s anatomical studies, Renaissance artists used horse pictures as a way to add meaning to a larger composition. By the Baroque era, equine portraiture had emerged, as rich tradesman began to request images of their newfound wealth. While some painted horse pictures with the horse as the subject, the majority of equine portraits by van Dyck, Rubens, and Velázquez are of politicians and princes atop purebred horses. In England, the Tudors were fond of horse racing, and horse pictures often incorporated elements of this popular pastime.
In the 18th century, George Stubbs revolutionized the way horse pictures were composed. At the time, the Royal Academy felt that animal pictures lacked dignity, but Stubbs applied a medical eye to horse pictures, stressing the anatomy in a scientific way, and making the horse the center and sole focus of his painting. One of his most famous paintings (Whistlejacket), in fact, is nothing more than a lone horse in front of a pale background. For Stubbs, horse pictures were a way of displaying the fierce beauty of the natural world, and taming it with scientific precision.
The 19th century saw the decrease in equine-powered labor, but a rise in equine sporting. As a result, Victorian horse pictures used horses as a way of nostalgically representing innocence in pastoral bliss, or as a way of capturing the excitement and cosmopolitan nature of city life. Horse paintings became more realistic as artists studied Eadweard Muybridge’s photographic horse pictures.
Today, most of the paintings that use horse pictures aren’t interested in painting the animal for symbolic reasons. They are portrait artists painting winning race horses, or sculptures creating realistic bronze reproductions for adoring collectors. But just as the horse continues to find a place in a changing society, no doubt horse pictures will be able to accommodate them as well.
