Hand-painted in oil
About this Artwork
The vehicle is the subject; the team is not named
A diligence was a horse-drawn public coach — scheduled transport, carrying people who had paid for a seat between two towns. The title names the vehicle and the route town and stops there. That is characteristic of harness subjects in this register: where a riding picture names the man or the animal, a coaching picture names the machine, because the machine is what the service was. The animals in that arrangement are interchangeable by design, changed at stages, and the record reflects it by not naming them.
What the record holds
The catalogue gives 1888 as the date of creation and a private collection as the location. The dimensions are 72 x 92 cm. Post-Impressionism is the recorded style and Dutch the nationality attached to the painter. Alongside Animal Art > Horse the record carries landscape, urban and architectural headings, and the measured colour families of the image are yellow and green.
What this entry cannot tell you
The animal heading is on the record, and the vehicle in the title is one that horses drew. Neither of those establishes that a horse is in the picture. This register is written from a catalogue rather than from the image, and a coach can be painted standing empty in a yard. Seven works by this painter are catalogued here and four of them name a vehicle or a draught animal rather than a horse; the group is about transport, and this entry says only that.
