Equine sculpture is part of the human epic. Man’s greatest anguish is the passage of time, and time lies between forgetting and remembering. What could be more enduring and reassuring than a sculpture? You leave posterity the image of what ennobles you. It’s the horse that ennobles man par excellence, because it multiplies his speed, the capacity of his dream, and forces him to forget himself for his mount.
The horse has nurtured man, accompanied him in his preoccupations for the afterlife, in his wars, in his industry and in his games.
The Saint-Germain Museum conserves small ivory horses and reindeer antler thrusters decorated with equestrian figurines from the Hautes-Pyrénées, dating from the Magdalenian Age (between 20,000 and 15,000 BC). This prehistoric horse is a type of pony with a thick mane and a heavy head, reminiscent of Przewalski’s horse. These ponies lived in huge herds and were game for man until they almost disappeared.
We don’t know exactly when hunters captured an orphaned foal and brought it back to the camp for the children to play with, thus giving birth to horseback riding. However, once domesticated, the horse became an object of worship and veneration. In Provence, 8000 B.C., there is a sanctuary where the vosselet of a giant horse was carved into the rock in the same gigantic style as the immense white horse carved into the chalk of the Uffington cliffs in southern England.
A sacred, mythical animal, the psychopomp horse accompanied the dead to their graves. They are found in China, in life-size terracotta, often harnessed to their chariot, impeccably aligned for millennia in the tombs of emperors. They are strong, muscular horses, modeled after life, with cut manes and braided tails. They are fitted with a bit and saddle or harnessed as a quadriga.
Horse and sculpture: from sacred horse to historical monument
Sacred horses are also the horses of St. Mark’s in Venice: a gilded quadriga to pull the solar chariot, sculpted in the 5th century B.C. Like the horses of the Parthenon in Athens, they were undoubtedly sculpted after flesh-and-blood models, so vivid are they. You can see them pawing and gnawing on their bits. They wear their manes and toupees in a Persian style reminiscent of the more hieratic but equally lively Assyrian bas-reliefs.
Later in Europe, we find the horse in the sacred. A fine example is the detail on the south portal of the church at Melle: a life-size stone equestrian statue of Christ wearing spurs. Christ the knight introduces us to the representation of the horse as an animal of war. If the horse is linked to the cult of the dead, it is also a mount of war. We’ve seen this in Egyptian and Assyrian bas-reliefs, as well as those on the Parthenon. The glory of the Roman Empire rested not only on its legions, but also on its cavalry.
In the sculpture of Marcus Aurelius in Rome’s Piazza del Campidoglio, we have the most important preserved equestrian statue of Roman antiquity, and the exact description of the ideal Roman warhorse as described by the veterinarian Pelagonius: “The fine head, the nostrils wide open, the ears small and well erect, the neck supple and broad without being too elongated, the abundant mane falling on the right side, the withers well defined, the flanks powerful and muscular, shoulders broad and straight, muscles prominent throughout the body, back and belly well shaped, legs straight, croup and hips full and muscular, black hooves well dug and topped by pasterns of reasonable size. The horse should generally be so constituted as to appear tall and well-built, with an active appearance and roundness proportionate to its size.” This equestrian statue, a giant effigy, would later inspire all the world’s great warriors, until cavalry was no longer a tool of war. Here, in Carolingian art, is Charlemagne, a bronze equestrian statuette representing the emperor without stirrups, in antique style, sword and globe in hand. Here’s Mastino’s extraordinary equestrian figure on the Scaligeri tomb in Verona: the horse and its knight are masked in armor, imposing and enigmatic. Then there’s Robert Malatesta, lord of Rimini, sculpted in high relief, bareheaded and in armor on a dashing horse, and finally, in the middle of the Renaissance, the fantastic Colleoni monument: the rider is in armor; he personifies all the condottieri of the Renaissance wars, and his horse wears the antique toupee.
Over time, the number of equestrian statues multiplied. Virtually every French king has had one. 11 There’s a fascinating book on the work involved in casting Louis XV’s equestrian statue. It was a real undertaking. Napoleon had his own, one of the most remarkable being the one in the central square of La Roche-sur-Yon.
Those of Joan of Arc were created in the 19th century, one by Barye, the other by Frémiet. Finally, we must mention one of Bourdelle’s finest works, General Alvear’s mount in Buenos Aires, and not forgetting a sculpture by Troubetzkoy that is not the effigy of a soldier, but that of the great warrior of the spirit that was Tolstoy.
Rarely have the position and weight of the rider been portrayed with such accuracy, ease, and naturalness.
Horses and sculpture: after the war, back to work
War is not all men do. For millennia, horses and oxen were used to plough and harrow the fields. It wasn’t until the 18th century, however, that the powerful draught horses were developed, selected for major works and the pride of agricultural exhibitions and fairs. They aroused as much artistic passion as the lighter breeds. The American sculptor Herbert Haseltine toured England to sculpt the finest specimens of the Suffolk Punch, Shire, and Percheron breeds. The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond (U.S.A.) has a remarkable marble effigy of the champion Percheron Rhum.
In France, we should also mention Frémiet’s bronze sculpture of his two towing horses fixed in the middle of an effort and Jean Joire’s the two-horse Fardier. When the oracle of Delphi was asked about the horse, he replied: “The horse is intelligence!” and to the question “Why?” he answered “It’s a mystery.” Today, the mystery has been solved. After the First World War, with mechanization and the widespread use of tractors powered by internal combustion engines, the horse and small family farms disappeared. In the USA, between 1920 and 1930, 6 million horses were eliminated from the agricultural sector. In 1939, a train loaded with the 23 finest English Shire stallions was sent to the slaughterhouse, and 60 others were hung. This tragedy, the disastrous consequences of which we are still suffering, is perfectly illustrated by three of the most important sculptures of the early 20th century: “Le Grand Fardier” or “dix minutes de repos”, “L’Entrée du marché aux chevaux” and “Les Vieux Chevaux sortant de la mine” by Rembrandt Bugatti, one of the last witnesses to the civilization of the horse. The last of these bronzes depicts the pathetic end of our old servants leaving the mines half-blind and destined for the knacker’s yard. It’s the end of a world.
At the end of the 19th century, we shouldn’t forget the mythical epic of the Far West illustrated by Remington’s sculptures. Here we find the central idea of the horse as a companion in solitude and as a faithful, intelligent, and courageous partner in the face of danger and death. His first work was a 60 cm bronze of a cowboy taming a horse.
His first attempt was a masterstroke: the rendering is perfectly alive, the furious horse rears, the rider holds on with one hand, the other grips the whip.
Horses and sculpture: a variety of disciplines.
Men didn’t wait until the 19th century to enjoy racing horses. In Greece, horse racing was part of the Olympic Games. Byzantium pushed horse racing to the point of fanaticism, as did Rome. But it was in the 19th century that the principles of English thoroughbred racing were established and codified. In the 19th century, there was no shortage of sculptors to illustrate this new breed, often in a very realistic style: the sculptor Frémiet stands out with his Two Thoroughbreds and jockeys, which best illustrate this new sport from every angle. Mène also produced a beautiful jockey on horseback.
Also worthy of mention are Isidore Bonheur, Count Gérard de Ruille, Gayrard and Moignez. But it was Degas, a regular at the racecourse, who, although half-blind, sketched in wax a number of Thoroughbred horses whose attitudes are so true to life. These waxes were cast in bronze and covered with a marvelous patina by Hébrard, undoubtedly one of the greatest founders of his time.
Another racehorse, the Oriental Thoroughbred, also known as the Arabian, is the origin of the crossbreed from which the English Thoroughbred was derived. In the 19th century, many sculptors portrayed this wonderfully aesthetic horse, the product of natural selection and domesticated by man. We know of some very fine sculptures by Fratin, Mène and Barye, whose style is very personal.
At the beginning of the 20th century, with Bourdelle, Bugatti and Degas, the desire to sculpt the horse for its own sake, for the admiration of its forms, its attitudes and even its mind, ended.
For modern and contemporary art, the horse is no more than a pretext, whether for a hyper-realistic rendering, such as Robert Graham’s horse “Espon” 1981, or primitive art-inspired arrangements, such as William Tumbull’s Great Horse 1929.
Like the rest of the world, art has changed. It is served by a different kind of man, whose talent is fading in the face of the mediatization that is becoming the essence of what we might call the industrial age of art. There are, of course, a few exceptions.
Find out more: an art gallery featuring horse sculptures
