Aelbert Cuyp was a Dutch painter during the late 17th century. He came from a family of artists and grew to become a celebrated landscape artist and the most famous member of the Cuyp family.
While Cuyp was a prolific artist he rarely dated his paintings which has made it difficult to put them in chronological order. Horses are not an important part of his art, but tend to make an appearance in the idyllic pastoral or lakeside scenes he was fond of painting.
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Antoine-Jean Gros was a French painter during the late 18th and early 19th century. By the time he was 20 he had been accused of sympathizing with French royalists during the revolution and fled the country to Italy.
It was in Milan that Gros met Napoleon, who would later be the subject of some of the most renowned work Gros would complete. At the end of the 18th century the artist made his way back to France where his portraits of Napoleon were celebrated and he was honored.
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John Frederick Herring, Sr was an English artist during the early 19th century. He showed a passion for sketching early in life but took a job as a coach driver to support his family.
It was his coaching job that actually led to Herring’s career as an artist. He was discovered by Charles Spencer-Stanhope who loved Herring’s work and immediately found him commissioned work. Initially he continued driving as he painted, but eventually his offers of sponsorship won and he pursued art full time.
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John Ferneley was an English painter during the early 19th century who specialized in scenes with hunters and sporting horses. His work shows hunting during a time when it was en vogue and he soon became sought after as an equestrian artist.
Ferneley became well known for creating panoramic paintings that show a sequence of events and was known to collaborate with Sir Frances Grant who traded him help painting characters for help painting horses.
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Paulus Potter was a Dutch painter during the mid 17th century, he lived a short but artistic life and died of tuberculosis before reaching his 30th birthday. Much of his short life was spend observing and painting barnyard animals, particularly cows and horses.
Potter may well have been the first pet portrait artist, as his subjects were the animals themselves. He was said to have wandered the Dutch countryside with his sketchbook in hand – fascinated with the harmony between the animals, their surroundings and the light that played upon them.
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Wilhelm von Kobell was a German painter during the late 18th and early 19th century. He recieved artistic training from a young age in Germany and tried a number of styles, however he came to base his particular style on Dutch art.
Kobell grew to be a prolific painter and was well-respected for his landscapes, portrait work, agrarian and battle scenes, all of which often featured horses. The horses in his art are handsome and bold, a clear sign that their owners are wealthy.
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Karl Briullov was a Russian painter of the late 18th and early 19th century. His work was instrumental in the Russian art transition from neoclassicism to romanticism. Although horses are a purely incidental subject in his work, the art speaks for itself.
The inclusion of animals in his work generally comes from his subjects – horses have long been used in portraits of royalty and wealthy patrons. Briullov simply applied his detailed artistic style to mounts when it was required of him.
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Wouterus Verschuun was a Dutch painter who focused his art on animal subjects, primarily horses. In keeping with Dutch art traditions both his attention to detail and anatomy manages to be simple and embellished all at the same time.
As a youth Verschuun studied with landscape and cattle painters who clearly helped him develop an admiration for the common working animal. He left a legacy of 400 paintings and some 2000 drawings when he died in 1874. Not to mention a protégé who later went on to become quite the celebrated equine artist himself, Anton Mauve.
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Karl Bodmer was born in Switzerland and studied art there until he turned 24 when he was pegged by Prince Alexander of Wid-Newuied to accompany him to the New World. The purpose of the trip – to study the Native tribes of America.
Bodmer accompanied the prince throughout North America for several years learning and painting the local people along the way (81 images of them). His work embodies many native cultures we no longer see today and provide a fairly realistic & objective view of life for North American tribes during the early 19th century.
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Ludwig Koch was a renowned equestrian painter in his home country of Austria and today his work is known throughout the world. Clearly he had a thing for dressage and coming from Austria he had plenty of material to work with.
Sadly when Ludwig immigrated to the US in the 1920’s his art went unappreciated there during the rest of his lifetime. However love of the subject matter is obvious in each loving detail of his work.
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While I’ve proven that I’m a horse art lover & I’ve explored some incredibly old pieces. I’ve never quite gone this old, back into prehistory to the crude artwork of our ancient ancestors.
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