The Falconer, Comte Alphonse de Toulouse Lautrec

Two animals, and only one of them is hunting

Mounted falconry is the clearest case in this register of the horse working as a platform rather than as a hunter. The bird does the pursuit; the horse carries the man who carries the bird, and covers the ground between one flight and the next. Nothing about the animal's speed, jumping or stamina is being tested in the way a foxhunting picture tests it. The title names a falconer and a sitter, which makes the work a portrait built on an activity — the sitter is identified by what he does with animals.

What the record holds

The catalogue gives 1881 as the date of creation and the Musee Toulouse-Lautrec in Albi as the location, one of four works in this register held there. No dimensions are recorded; the field is empty and this entry does not fill it. Impressionism is the style term and French the nationality attached to the painter. The record files portraiture, male portraiture, Animal Art > Horse, cultural heritage and a mythology heading, and the measured colour families of the image are red and pink.

What a portrait of an activity records

It records a claim to leisure of a particular kind. Falconry required birds, ground and time. A picture that identifies a sitter through it is asserting all three, and the catalogue holds the assertion without testing it.