Two Horses in a Pasture

A racing painter's animals with nothing to do

Thirty-one works by this painter are catalogued in this register and eighteen of them name a race, a course, a jockey, a derby or a steeplechase. This one names a field and two animals in it. Read against his own group in this catalogue, that is the exception: the horse removed from the fixture, the crowd, the stands and the money, standing in grass. The functional content is zero, and the picture is therefore about the animal as a shape and a presence rather than about anything it is being used for.

What the record holds

The catalogue gives 1871 as the date of creation and a private collection as the location. The dimensions are 45.1 x 35.5 cm, taller than wide by the order the record gives, though the field does not state which measurement is the height. Impressionism is the recorded style and French the nationality attached to the painter. Alongside Animal Art > Horse the record carries landscape, field and Eco Nature headings, and the measured colour family of the image is yellow.

Where a picture like this earns its place

A catalogue built only from action subjects would suggest the animal spent its life working. It did not. The pasture entries are the corrective, and this register keeps them next to the racing ones on purpose.