Tomorrow we celebrate the tercentenary of the birth of the great equine artist George Stubbs (1724-1806). In his honour, this article looks at some of the finest paintings of horses following Stubbs’ examples from the late eighteenth century.

Théodore Géricault (1791–1824) was probably introduced to the painting of horses when he was a student of Carle Vernet in Paris, from 1808. He developed his skills in the stables of the palace at Versailles, and became an accomplished rider himself.

In 1812, Géricault submitted his first painting to the Salon. The Charging Chasseur (1812) was not only accepted, but attained such critical acclaim that he was awarded a gold medal, and his future appeared bright. It’s rich with fine detail in the metalwork of the horse’s headstall, and the chasseur’s tunic.

In 1820, Géricault accompanied his masterwork The Raft of the Medusa for exhibition in London, and remained in England until the following year. His Epsom Derby painted in 1821 follows the convention of the day in showing galloping racehorses flying through the air without contact with the ground beneath them. The Derby Stakes is a flat race that has been run on Epsom Downs, to the south of London, since 1780. At this time it was run on a Thursday in late May or early June, despite the unseasonal weather seen here.

Tragically, horse riding was also contributor to Géricault’s undoing and untimely death in 1824, at the age of only thirty-two.

Although the British painter James Ward (1769–1859) didn’t set out to specialise in the painting of horses, during the first couple of decades of the nineteenth century he painted the portraits of several famous racehorses.

By 1820, Ward was struggling to make ends meet from his art. He struck lucky with two prominent paintings, The Deer Stealer, commissioned by Theophilus Levett, and this portrait of Dr. Syntax, a Bay Racehorse, Standing in a Coastal Landscape, an Estuary Beyond (1820). Doctor Syntax (1811-38) was owned by Ralph Riddell, and raced only in northern England, where he was one of the most successful racehorses of all time. His portrait was painted twice by John Frederick Herring, Senior, and Ward’s turn came in 1820, when the horse won all four of his recorded races.

Some of Ward’s later paintings of a white horse confronting a huge and menacing boa constrictor (or ‘Liboya Serpent’) have survived. The Moment (1831) is probably the best of these, with its unusually sketchy background.

Horace Vernet (1789–1863), son of Carle who had taught the young Géricault, is best-known for his paintings of battles, including those of the French colonisation of Algeria. He was also among the early artists to have been inspired by Lord Byron’s narrative poem Mazeppa, first published in 1819.

Vernet’s Mazeppa and the Wolves from 1826 is one of several that he painted of this story.

Théodore Géricault was the young Eugène Delacroix’s (1798–1863) great friend and mentor, and influenced the latter’s paintings of horses.

Shortly after Géricault’s untimely death, Delacroix visited tales of chivalry in Combat Between Two Horsemen in Armour, painted at some time between 1825-30.

Delacroix painted this spirited watercolour of a Horse Frightened by Lightning in the same period.

In 1835, Delacroix returned to Lord Byron’s Orientalist tale of the Giaour, and painted this version of the Combat of the Giaour and Hassan. This time he had the benefit of watching Moroccan cavalry manoeuvres, and a commission from the Comte de Mornay, who had led the diplomatic mission that had earlier taken the artist to North Africa. The resulting composition is radically different from his earlier version, and although Mornay seems to have been pleased with the result, the critics were less impressed.

In 1861, shortly before Delacroix’s death, Edgar Degas’ (1834–1917) interest in horseracing was kindled when he visited a former schoolfriend on his country estate. From about 1869 onwards, his paintings of horseracing often contained substantial landscape passages, and some were perhaps more landscape than racing.

Degas’ At the Races in the Countryside from 1869 combines three contrasting uses for horses: in the foreground a pair are drawing a family in their carriage, in the middle distance they are being ridden as a means of transport, and deeper still they are racing on the flat.

Horses in a Meadow (1871) is particularly interesting for its inclusion of industrial elements, in the form of smoking chimneys and the steam vessels in the river behind. These are often cited as being characteristic of Impressionist paintings, but are equally typical of Degas’ pursuit of images showing ‘modern life’.

Finally, Degas’ later Jockeys on Horseback before Distant Hills (1884) shows a group of racehorses idling about as their riders talk, probably prior to a race.

Tomorrow I’ll tell of the unusual career of George Stubbs, who specialised in painting portraits of racehorses.

In the first of these two articles showing paintings of the horse in narrative, I showed examples from classical myths and legends, culminating in that of Saint George and the dragon. This leads to the role of the horse in chivalry, with its origins in the crusades.

The crusades presented Carl Friedrich Lessing with an ideal combination of mediaeval history, romance, and chivalry. In The Return of the Crusader from 1835, he shows a lone knight in full armour dozing as his horse plods its way up a path from the coast. Although his armour is still shiny, a tattered battle pennant hangs limply from his lance. This is based on a Romantic poem by the writer Karl Leberecht Immermann (1796-1840).

Walter Crane is one of the earlier artists to depict a late fifteenth century poem revived in a ballad from 1819 by John Keats. The Belle Dame Sans Merci is shown riding side-saddle on the knight’s horse, flowers in her long, flowing tresses, as the knight, clad in armour and heraldic overgarments, holds her hand.

The same year that Keats wrote his ballad, Lord Byron wrote his poetic account of the legendary Mazeppa, who was bound naked to a wild horse and set loose as punishment for his affair with a Polish Countess.

Horace Vernet’s Mazeppa and the Wolves from 1826 shows the young victim during his wild ride that took him to the point of death before he was rescued.

Mykola Samokish’s watercolour of a Ukrainian Cossack on a Horse, or Haidamak on a Horse from 1899 shows a haidamaka, a Ukrainian insurgent who took part in uprisings against the ruling Polish Empire that governed west Ukraine in the eighteenth century. They were immortalised in an epic poem in 1841 by the father of Ukrainian literature Taras Shevchenko.

Horses are a longstanding feature of circuses, and individual showmen and women around the world.

Georges Seurat’s The Circus from 1891 is one of the masterpieces of Divisionism, and may depict a scene in the Cirque Fernando of Montmartre in Paris. Its internal contradiction is the artist’s choice of a painstakingly slow and mechanical method of painting, for a motif that is full of spontaneous movement and action.

In the millennia before the arrival of steam engines, horses were the fastest means of travel, and inevitably were used in racing.

In February 1817, Théodore Géricault witnessed the Roman Carnival, with its traditional horse race. Among the studies that he made of that event is Race of the Barberi Horses (1817), intended for a later large studio painting that he never started. This was a longstanding tradition of the Roman Carnival, where these horses were gathered in the Piazza del Popolo, then raced without riders to gallop down the Corso to be recaptured at the finish. The Barberi are a hardy North African breed popular among the Berbers, and are still bred today although this race has long since ceased.

More orderly horseraces have been popular events.

Géricault’s The Epsom Derby from 1821 follows the convention of the day in showing galloping racehorses flying through the air, legs in full extension, without contact with the ground beneath them. It wasn’t until early photographic studies demonstrated that this never occurred in real life that artists reluctantly changed their images.

The Derby Stakes is a flat-race that has been run on Epsom Downs, to the south of London, since 1780. At this time it was run on a Thursday in late May or early June, despite the unseasonal weather seen here. It was accompanied by a large fair, the subject of a later painting by William Powell Frith in 1858. I suspect that Géricault’s version was a significant influence on the later equestrian paintings of Edgar Degas.

The New World of the Americas grew their own stories about feats achieved by horses and their riders.

Grant Wood’s Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (1931) was inspired by Longfellow’s poem Paul Revere’s Ride (1860), telling of the American patriot Paul Revere (1735-1818) and his midnight ride on 18 April 1775, to alert colonial militia of the approach of British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord. This is shown using a bird’s eye view giving it an air of unreality.

My last two paintings are even more unreal.

Long before Courbet’s well-known allegorical painting of his studio, Horace Vernet painted his as being just as crowded, rich in stories, and puzzling. In the centre, two young men fight one another with swords by a white horse, which is tethered to the wall. Immediately in front of the white horse is a pair of boxers, and another young man sits on the back of a chair to watch the fencing, holding a rifle against the left side of his body.

In the left background a couple of pupils are actually engaged in painting at easels, but the most prominent easel in the room is completely ignored by those present. Another painter is at work at the far left, apparently talking with three young men who are watching, and accompanied by a drummer. Another small group of young men is engaged in discussion against the wall to the left.

Henry Fuseli’s breakthrough painting of his career, The Nightmare from 1781 was exhibited the following year at the Royal Academy, and remains the work by which he is best known. It shows a daemonic incubus squatting on the torso of a young woman, who is laid out as if in a deep sleep in bed, her head thrown back, and her arms above her head. Lurking in the darkness to the left is the head of a black horse, whose eyes appear unseeing. The incubus stares directly at the viewer in a manner which arouses discomfort.