Hand-painted in oil
About this Artwork
The working animal at the end of its use
Almost every traction picture in this register shows the arrangement functioning: the team pulls, the cart moves, the plough turns the ground. This title states the opposite. A collapsed horse is a working animal that has stopped working, and a farmer beside it is a man whose equipment has failed in a field. That is a subject with no ceremonial content at all, and it is the exact inverse of the court portraits catalogued here, where the entire point is an animal visibly under control and equal to its task.
What the record holds
The catalogue gives 1903 as the date of creation and a private collection as the location. The dimensions are 62 x 107 cm, wide in the larger direction — a horizontal format, which suits a subject spread along the ground rather than raised above it. Realism is the recorded style and Italian the nationality attached to the painter. The categories are landscape, field and Animal Art > Horse, and the measured colour family of the image is ochre.
What the record does not say
Nothing here identifies a place, a farm or an incident, and nothing states an outcome. The title names a condition. This register reports the condition the title names and adds nothing to it.
Sources
1 references- Fattori, Giovanni — Getty ULAN
Italian painter and etcher, 1825-1908
