Portrait of Georges Anthony

A named sitter and an animal in the file

The title gives a name and nothing else: no rank, no office, no occasion. What tells you a horse is present is the filing, since the record carries Animal Art > Horse alongside portraiture and male portraiture. In a portrait of a private sitter the animal is usually there as an attribute, standing for a way of life rather than for command, and this catalogue puts such pictures in the same drawer as the state portraits without claiming they do the same work.

What the record holds

The date of creation is 1796 and the location is the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon, in Dijon. The dimensions are not recorded, which is true of 253 records here. Romanticism is the recorded style, French the recorded nationality, and the measured colour family of the image is indigo, a family that appears on 5 records in the whole catalogue.

The limit of a portrait title

A title that names only a sitter leaves the function of the animal undetermined. It could be a riding horse, a working one, or a prop brought in for the picture. The record does not say, and this entry does not choose for it.