During the Eighteenth Century, English horsemen brought their native mares to Eastern stallions and created the finest breed of horse in the world: the Thoroughbred. For racing, foxhunting, or the art of dressage, nothing could surpass this elegant new breed. Delighted English aristocrats commissioned the best artists of their day to paint portraits of their prized stock. More than two centuries later, these pictures are among the best-loved in sporting art. They are treasured in museum galleries, guarded in palace collections, and admired at the historic stud farms of the US and UK. Owning one of these rarities of equine art indicates an elevated level of taste, knowledge, and accomplishment. They very seldom appear on the art market. Today The Historic Horse offers original equine portraits in the manner of the eighteenth century. These paintings are not copies of existing art; they are new works created with the tools, methods, and media of earlier eras. They show the horse as our ancestors knew and loved it--a force of Nature, beautiful, sensitive, and intelligent.

1. A Gentleman with his favourite Hounds in an American Landscape
Oil on panel, 18” x 24”
1800 USD
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, hunt staff did not always wear
what we have come to regard as typical red coats; they often wore the buff, brown,
or black coats that were their daily work attire around the stables. The lighting and
landscape effects of this work are similar to George Stubbs’s 1773 work The Earl
of Carlisle’s favourite chestnut Horse, ridden byWilliam Shutt, his Groom.
However, the physical location is reminiscent of Eastern seaboard rivers.

2. Lady Humston’s Chestnut Mare, running in a Field
Oil on canvas, 18” x 24”
1500 USD
Prior to the development of sequential photography in the late nineteenth century, the
movements of the horse at the gallop were not understood, and artists typically
depicted running horses with their fore- and hindlegs spread in the classic “rocking-
horse stance”. Lady Louise Amalie Humston was a mid-eighteenth-century horse
breeder and student of the turf who contributed to the development of the
Thoroughbred.

3. Morocco, a Horse of Barbary, being dress’d
Oil on linen
18” x 24”
1500 USD
Though we think of eighteenth-century horsemanship as being principally
concerned with the hunt and racecourse, the art of classical dressage was still
popular in preparing riding or exhibition horses for the aristocracy. As the
Thoroughbred stud-book was not closed, horses were still imported from the
Middle East to cross with native mares. Artists like Stubbs occasionally portrayed
horses performing the piaffe, levade, canter-pirouette, and other movements of

4. classical dressage. This scene depicts an imported stallion of the Berber type in the
levade in hand.
Mr Greene Creighton maneging a chestnut Horse at Sunset
Oil on canvas
18” x 24”
1500 USD
It appears that in eighteenth-century England the verb “to manege”, meaning to
train in a covered school, was a way of describing dressage. This Arab-type horse
is learning the canter-pirouette, a fairly advanced dressage movement.

5. A bay Horse trotting with a pied Hound
Oil on linen
16” x 20”
1200 USD
A long hindquarter and extremely long cannon bones were admired as signs of
refinement during the eighteenth century. Again, the hound is shown in the
stretched rocking-horse stance, as period artists were unsure how to suggest
running.

6. Colonel Massie’s bay Colt Lion, led by a Groom
Oil on canvas
20” x 24”
1500 USD
The structure of the bridle in this scene is typical of those used in the eighteenth
century: its bit is lacking the ring that today keeps the snaffle from being pulled
sideways through the horse’s mouth, and instead relies on a short shank and a tiny
ring. There is no noseband; they did not come into wide use until riders learned
that they have a protective effect on the horse’s jaw and can help maintain bit
function. This young stallion has an exaggeratedly fine head and perilously long
legs, which were much admired. In his early career Stubbs often painted animals as
their owners wanted them painted, without much reference to anatomic
correctness; later, when he was successful and could decline commissions, he
painted with more realism, as he wished.

7. Roseberry, a Stallion of Cleveland
Oil on canvas
18” x 24”
1500 USD
The Cleveland Bay was developed in Yorkshire, where an upstanding breed of
light draft and riding horse was required. They are tall, strongly built animals,
invariably bay with only a star permitted, and the stallions often have 9” bone.
Magnificently suited for hunting, eventing, dressage, coaching, or hacking,
endowed with a tranquil position but enough speed to hunt first-flight, the
Clevelands have nonetheless at times been quite endangered as a breed.