On the Way to the Market

A journey with a purpose in the title

Going to market is an economic errand, and a picture that says so in its title has already told you what the animals are for: carrying people and goods to a place where both will be traded. The record files the work under rural and forest landscape, group portraiture and Animal Art > Horse, with tree and architectural headings alongside.

Scale against subject

The dimensions are 260.5 x 211 cm. That is state-portrait scale given over to a working errand, and it is the fact in this record most worth noticing. Canvases of that size in this catalogue are more often occupied by mounted rulers; here the same wall space goes to people on their way to sell something.

What the record holds

The date of creation is 1859 and the location is the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, one of 7 records here that name that collection. The record gives Realism as the style term, French as the nationality, and ochre and yellow as the measured colour families of the image.