The horse’s bold brush with the world of art
Horses are a prominent characteristic throughout the long history of art, from ancient cave paintings inward French Republic to depictions of some of the dandy moments inward human history. English linguistic communication professor Charles Caramello explores the horse’s component inward art.
Horse enthusiasts tend to dear non only equines, but also artistic as well as literary depictions of them. On that premise, I would similar to offering a few notes on the Equus caballus inward painting. Illustrative rather than comprehensive, they are meant only to supply a few leads as well as to encourage readers to add together their own.
From the cave paintings at Lascaux, inward France, where equines predominate alongside fauna images, to Picasso’s Guernica (1937), his vast mural elegy on the bombing of Guernica, centered on the epitome of a screaming horse, the equine has been totemic as well as iconic inward Western (and world) painting.
This makes perfect feel for at to the lowest degree iii reasons. First, for millennia, the Equus caballus has played a critical fabric component inward human transportation as well as warfare, project as well as sport, as well as has enjoyed universal if varying value every bit commodity, upper-case alphabetic lineament investment, as well as sign of social as well as economical status. Second, the Equus caballus has a beauty that lends itself inherently to visual art: all musculus as well as musculature, ability as well as speed, elegance of cast as well as subtlety of hue, the Equus caballus makes an ideal discipline whether inward activity or at rest. And third, the Equus caballus haunts our dreams: at in i lawsuit fleshy as well as ethereal, worldly as well as other-worldly, the Equus caballus possesses magic that has gripped humans since the earliest encounters of the 2 species.
Recent books surveying the history of equine fine art abound, notably John Baskett, The Horse inward Art (2006), Tamsin Pickeral, The Horse: 30,000 Years of the Horse inward Art (2009), as well as the massive collection yesteryear many hands, as well as curated yesteryear Jean-Louis Gouraud, The Horse: From Cave Paintings to Modern Art (2010).
Contemporary exhibitions of equine art, as well as equine accouterments, are fairly common, such every bit The Armored Horse inward Europe, 1480-1620, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2005), as well as Picasso: Horses, Museo Picasso Malaga (2010).
Paintings as well as portraits of horses figure prominently inward Renaissance through Modern art, ranging inward the yesteryear dyad of centuries from equestrian portraits yesteryear Jacques-Louis David as well as Théodore Géricault as well as Thoroughbred racing scenes yesteryear Édouard Manet as well as Edgar Degas, to the brilliant equine studies yesteryear Franz Marc that gave the artistic circle as well as mag Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) their name, as well as Picasso’s vast trunk of work, where the Equus caballus is a pervasive thematic as well as formal element.
Though hunt scenes as well as other genre paintings of anonymous horses long bring been staples of equine art, portraiture of private horses also forms a robust tradition. The prolific 18th century British painter George Stubbs defines its high H2O mark. Stubbs’s large as well as celebrated trunk of equine portraiture ranges from smaller portraits of private horses as well as larger double portraits of horses as well as their owners or jockeys to such massive canvases every bit Whistlejacket (c. 1762), a life-size tour de forcefulness commissioned yesteryear the 2nd Marquess of Rockingham to memorialize his Arabian stallion of that name— a icon that literally dominates Room 34 of the National Gallery inward London.
The tradition of equine portraiture has continued unbroken since the 18th century as well as ranges inward our time, for example, from the charcoal portraits as well as illustrations of Thoroughbreds yesteryear the mid-20th century draftsman C. W. Anderson, to the monumental equine canvases yesteryear the contemporary creative individual Patricia Powers, to the thousands of portraits, executed yesteryear hundreds of known as well as unknown painters as well as photographers, of the horses that amateurs ain as well as love.
Probably to a greater extent than numerous than portraits of horses, however, are equestrian portraits of eminent persons on horses. And since many such persons were identified with a specific mount, equestrian paintings often cast a double portrait of human as well as horse. Equestrian portraits of men dominate the tradition, though the many of import paintings of women equestrians yesteryear Alfred de Dreux inward the 19th century, for example, supply an of import counterpoint.
Equestrian portraits of generals as well as monarchs clearly dominate the field, ranging from Peter-Paul Rubens’s Philip II Crowned yesteryear Victory (1628) as well as Velázquez’s portraits of Philip IV of Kingdom of Spain (1635-36), to Franz Kruger’s portraits of Frederick Wilhelm III (1830-31) as well as Alexander I (1837), to January van Chelminski’s early on 20th century portraits of commanders as well as horsemen of the Great War of 1914-1918, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Marshal Joseph Joffre, Field Marshal Douglas Haig, as well as General John J. Pershing.
George Washington is i of the makers of modern American as well as European history who are subjects of large numbers of contemporary as well as subsequently equestrian portraits. Washington appears unmounted, with horses prominently featured inward the foreground or background, inward such contemporary industrial plant every bit Charles Wilson Peale’s GW at the Battle of Princeton (1781), John Trumbull’s Washington at Verplanck’s Point, NY, 1782 (1790), as well as Gilbert Stuart’s GW at Dorchester Heights (1806), to elevate but a few examples.
Equestrian portraits of an unmounted Washington, however, practise non get to competitor inward expose the portraits of Washington mounted, including Turnbull’s Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown (1787) as well as The Death of General Hugh Mercer at the Battle of Princeton (c. 1795); James Peale’s GW at the Battle of Princeton (1804) as well as Rembrandt Peale’s Equestrian Portrait of GW (c. 1835); and, at the plough of the lastly century, John Faed’s GW Taking the Salute at Trenton (c. 1900) as well as John Ward Dunsmore’s Washington as well as Lafayette at Valley Forge (1907).
Washington’s equestrian portraits, similar many of his non-equestrian portraits, emphasize physical stature as well as noble bearing every bit metaphors for armed services rank as well as potency as well as for a classical ideal of leadership inward a novel republic prissy nearly monarchy as well as revolutionary ideology alike.
Napoleon I doubtless wins the grand entitle of modern equestrian portraiture, non only because he loomed larger inward Western history than did Washington, but also because French Republic had to a greater extent than as well as greater contemporary painters than did the United States.
Perhaps because of his diminutive stature, Napoleon seems rarely if always to look unmounted, standing to a greater extent than or less a horse. Equestrian portraits of a mounted Napoleon, however, abound (many on his favorite mountain Marengo).
These include portraits focused alone on passenger as well as horse, such every bit Jacques-Louis David’s flamboyant, iconic, as well as multi-versioned Napoleon Crossing the Alps(1800), a discipline reinterpreted yesteryear Paul Delaroche inward 1848; as well as equestrian portraits yesteryear Carle Vernet (1805-10), Joseph Chabord (1810), Simon Meister (1826 as well as over again inward 1832), as well as Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier (1864).
Guillaume-Francois Colson’s vigorous N Enters Alexandria (1800) finds an interesting companion slice inward Jean-Léon Gérome’s N as well as His General Staff (1867), inward which the titular figures ride camels (though background figures ride horses).
A mounted Napoleon also appears every bit focal holler for inward many battle paintings, including renditions of the battles of Arcole, Austerlitz, Borodino, Eylau, Friedland, Jena, as well as Wagram. The dandy 19th century battlefield painter Robert Alexander Hillingford executed numerous equestrian portraits of both Napoleon as well as the Duke of Wellington—including a large suite of Waterloo battle paintings—that advise ecumenism inward aesthetics if non just disinterest inward armed services outcomes.
A contemporary British cartoon, finally, Napoleon’s Exile to Elba, depicts Napoleon mounted backwards on a donkey, brandishing a broken saber. Whatever its intent every bit lampoon, it cannot undermine the masterfully evocative as well as elegiac painting, Napoleon’s Retreat from Moscow, executed yesteryear Adolf Northen inward 1851.
This article is excerpted from a book-in-progress: Riding Late: Essays on Horsemanship, Cavalry, as well as the Great War.
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