Edgar Degas was a French Impressionist painter during the late 19th & early 20th centuries. Not just an artist, Degas was an art lover and during his lifetime he amassed an enormous collection of art.
Perhaps most widely celebrated for his scenes of Parisian life and his preoccupation with ballet dancers. However his horses are lovingly rendered and his use of color and shadow really captures the flashy coat colors of his subject.
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Many of my readers already know the artistic equine photography of Juliet Harrison, (and if you don’t know her you should check out her interview). Recently she sent me some information about a fantastic solo show and I had to share with my readers.
“Equiscapes” is a solo show by photographer Juliet Harrison who presents an innovative approach to traditional equine form photography. The show runs June 2nd through July 24th & there is also an opening reception June 10th from 6-8pm.
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Nope, it’s not the replica of Leonardo da Vinci’s original masterpiece, its way bigger than that. This is a statue revering a Mongolian legend & equestrian extrodinare, Genghis Khan.
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Rosa Bonheur was a French painter during the mid to late 19th century and she was widely known for her animal paintings. Her father was an artist and she began to study with him at an early age.
Most of her life was spent painting her animal subjects and exhibiting her work. There were very few females among her contemporaries, but Bonheur had no trouble making a name for herself. In fact, she was a flamboyant liberal who wore her hair short, smoked cigars and dressed in mens clothing. Although horses aren’t her sole subject, she captures them with a clearly equestrian perspective.
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Théodore Géricault was a French painter during the early 19th century and was known for two things, horses and his romantic artistic style. One of the few independently wealthy artists I’ve featured, it seems Théodore did as he pleased.
Géricault was a life-long horse lover and found himself fascinated with horses at a young age. He had no formal art education but the first studio he joined was that of Carle Vernet, another equestrian artist. Throughout his life he absorbed the styles of many artists each one contributing a little to his work.
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Albrecht Adam was a German artist during the early 19th century known for his battle scenes and his lovely horses. Bringing to the canvas his life experience on the battlefield & his obvious connection with horses.
Adam spent some time in Vienna where his work captured the attention of Napoleon’s stepson Eugène de Beauharnais and began to paint for him. Most of his work after that focused on Napoleon’s Russian campaign. Unlike many of the other great artists
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Vasily Vereshchagin was a Russian painter during the late 19th century who was celebrated for depicting battle scenes in his work. He became one of the first Russian artists to be recognized worldwide.
At 8 years Vereshchagin was sent to the Cadet Corps and graduated first in his naval school class. He left the service to pursue his art, but traveled with a military expedition to Turkestan. He re-entered the service for the Russo-Turkish War after which he rapidly produced pictures of war scenes. The images below lean more toward his scenes of Imperial rule in British India and his visit to Turkestan (much softer and more peaceful than his war imagery).
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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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