Shoeing

Maintenance as a subject

Shoeing is farriery: the periodic refitting of iron to a hoof, without which a working animal cannot keep working on hard ground. As a subject it belongs with the tacking-up and stable entries in this register rather than with anything ridden. The horse's function during it is to stand, on three legs, and tolerate being handled, and pictures of the operation are as much about the farrier's trade as about the animal.

What the record holds

The catalogue gives 1844 as the date of creation and Tate Modern in London as the location. No dimensions are recorded for this work. Romanticism is the style term and British the nationality attached to the painter. The record files it under Animal Art and Animal Art > Horse, and also under still life, which no part of the title supports and which is best treated as a tagging artefact. The measured colour family of the image is brown.

A location line is a record of a record

The collection named here is the one the source gives. Institutional holdings are redistributed between sites and renamed, and this register states the last published source rather than asserting where a picture hangs today. Corrections from readers who know better are the mechanism by which lines like this one get fixed.