Horse Power: An unbridled selection of horses in the Getty Museum’s collections by AMY HOOD






Hubby found this article for me and thought it would be great for a Sunday blogpost.  I agreed!  Original article here.

Horse Power.

An unbridled selection of horses in the Getty Museum’s collections





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2 comments have been posted...

  1. Bunny

    I see that apparently there is quite a lengthy history of the really, really bad mistake of using a bridle to tie a horse. Perhaps the painter’s uneducated (e.g., non-horse-person) assistant was handed the grey by the real groom — who likely had little use for the whole business of painting the horse for the baron/earl/duke/”toff”. No wonder this lovely stallion was providing the jaundiced eye to the painter.

    However, the leopard appy-marked horse brings me back to a long-held theory albeit originating from far further in the past than the era of the painting, which is this – that these strikingly marked horses originated in China/Mongolia and were a part of the great worldwide migrations and many ended up in the Americas. I do not agree that today’s wild (or feral, as the purists insist) horses were exclusively those who supposedly escaped Spanish explorers. All one needs do is look at art from millenia old Chinese dynasties to see the remarkable resemblance.

  2. Judith

    Just look at the shank on that bit, on the first painting — I would say that the horse’s expression is one of expectation of pain, poor boy.

    I do like the little dragon topping the palanquin in the tapestry — is it alive or a decoration?

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