The Horse: From Cave Paintings to Modern Art

From the caves at Lascaux to the European race tracks of Degas to the American West of Frederic Remington, the horse has never ceased to inspire the human imagination. Once omnipresent—on the battlefield, in agricultural work, and in transport—horses have little by little disappeared from our immediate environment, but they remain fixtures throughout our museums, atop pedestals in our town squares, and in the landscapes of memory.

Transcending genres, places, and eras, specialists on the history of the horse and its representation in art create an ideal panorama on the subject, guiding us through the rich legacy of The Horse: From Cave Paintings to Modern Art. With these scholars we cross the principal continents from east to west and from prehistory to the present day, examining an ever-surprising gallery of images that illustrate how dearly horses have been prized by all human societies fortunate enough to encounter them.

The artistic styles represented in this book offer something for every taste. There are cave paintings and sculptures, medieval illuminated manuscripts and photographs, depictions of battle, and scenes of leisure. Uccello, Rubens, Van Dyck, Velásquez, Géricault, Stubbs, David, and Picasso are among the 137 artists featured in this in-depth study. As the more than 300 images in The Horse diversely illustrate, the horse is as beautiful an animal as it has been useful—indeed, central—to the development of human society.