Horse leaving a Stable

The threshold moment

The title catches a transition: a horse coming out of a stable, which is the instant between rest and work. Stable-door subjects are a small and specific class. The animal is usually being led or is moving on its own into daylight, the building supplies a dark frame, and the picture is about the animal's bulk emerging rather than about anything it is going to do. Nothing in this record attaches a rider, a vehicle or a task to the scene.

What the record holds

The catalogue gives 1810 as the date of creation and the Musee Conde at Chantilly, France, as the location. The dimensions are 36 x 45 cm, a small picture, wider than tall. Romanticism is the style term and French the nationality attached to the painter. The categories are Animal Art and Animal Art > Horse alone. The measured colour family of the image is ochre.

An early date, and what it does not prove

1810 is early in the working life of the painter recorded here, and this register holds later works by the same hand covering cavalry, racing and the stable. Sequence is not development, and the catalogue records dates rather than an account of a career. What can be said is that the animal recurs across the entries under this name from 1810 to 1824.