Moroccan horseshoer

The trade that kept the animal working

Shoeing is maintenance, and maintenance is the least-painted part of the working animal's life. A horse in regular work on hard ground needed its feet attended to at intervals, and that requirement supported a trade practised wherever animals were used. A picture that takes the farrier as its subject is documenting an occupation rather than an animal: the man is working, the horse is standing still and being handled, and the transaction is commercial. In this register that puts the entry with the tacking-up and stable subjects rather than with anything in motion.

What the record holds

The catalogue gives 1870 as the date of creation and the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya in Barcelona as the location. The dimensions are 49 x 66.5 cm. Orientalism is the recorded style and Spanish the nationality attached to the painter. The measured colour family of the image is yellow.

A record with no animal category at all

The categories on this line are landscape and rural, and nothing else. There is no animal heading, no portrait heading and no architectural heading, although the title names a trade that exists only because of horses. The animal enters this record through one word in the title and through nothing else, which is a fair warning about how much weight the category column can carry.