Hoofbeats and Heartbeats:
the Horse in American Art
August 21 to November 21, 2010
Extended labels from the exhibition
- JOHN TRUMBULL American, 1756-1843
- Washington at Verplanck's Point, NY 1782, Reviewing
the French Troops after the Victory at Yorktown,
1790
- Oil on canvas
- Lent by Winterthur Museum; gift of Henry Francis du Pont
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- John Trumbull was an untrained artist when he went to
England in 1783 to study with expatriate American painter Benjamin West.
He returned as an accomplished history painter and brought with him an
ambitious series of paintings of the Revolutionary War complete except
for the likeness of George Washington. Trumbull knew the new president
well, having served as his aide-de-camp during the siege of Boston. Washington
posed for Trumbull no less than fourteen times in 1790, allowing the artist
to create many accurate portraits, including several equestrian works.
This particular painting was created as a personal memento and gift for
Martha Washington.
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- Washington was famed for his equestrian skills. Thomas
Jefferson called him "the best horseman of his age, and the most graceful
figure that could be seen on horseback." Trumbull depicts Washington
dismounted at a key crossing on the Hudson River near New York that was
bitterly contested throughout the war. Behind him, French forces pass ceremonially
through two ranks of American troops as they make their way from the ferry
landing to the general's headquarters. Washington ordered the display to
express his gratitude and respect for the French, who had helped to defeat
the British at Yorktown and secured needed arms and equipment for the American
army.
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- EDWARD HICKS American, 1780-1849
- Washington at the Delaware,
1849
- Oil on canvas
- Lent by Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia;
- gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch
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- Pennsylvania-born Edward Hicks was one of the most popular
Quaker ministers of his day, traveling widely to preach sermons that drew
large crowds. He supported his religious work and growing family by working
as a sign, furniture, and coach painter. He saw these arts and crafts as
a means to "get an honest living," but there were critics within
the Society of Friends who viewed overly ornamental works as opposed to
the Quaker virtues of simplicity and plainness. Later, Hicks was able to
unite his spiritual beliefs and art, creating paintings that contained
religious messages. He is most famous for his many versions of "the
Peaceable Kingdom," illustrating a prophecy from the book of Isaiah.
He also made his own adaptations of famous American paintings, like Thomas
Sully's Washington's Passage of the Delaware of 1819 that he knew
from an engraving. Hicks made small variations, but remained largely loyal
to Sully's composition.
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- The painting depicts an event that marked a turning point
in the Revolutionary War for the American forces, who, having been routed
by the British in New York and New Jersey, were seemingly near defeat.
During a bitter winter storm on the night of December 25, 1776, Washington
led his troops across the icy Delaware River to launch a surprise attack
on Britain's Hessian mercenaries in Trenton, New Jersey. The victory at
the Battle of Trenton sharply increased American morale and the bravery
of Washington and his army in treacherous conditions became an emblem of
American patriotism.
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- ANNA HYATT HUNTINGTON American, 1876-1973
- Sybil Ludington, 1961
- Bronze
- Lent by National Society of the Daughters of the American
Revolution
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- Sybil Ludington, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a Revolutionary
War militia company colonel, sprang into service on the night of April
26, 1777, when British forces sacked nearby Danbury, Connecticut. Ludington
mounted her horse and rode forty miles in pouring rain, warning residents
of the enemy's approach and calling military volunteers to service. She
arrived home at daybreak a hero, having mustered the regiment despite the
dangerous threat of British soldiers and roaming bandits.
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- Anna Hyatt Huntington, a specialist in equine and animal
sculpture, shows Ludington holding the stick used to pound on doors and
encourage her horse, Star. Although the sculpture includes a proper bridle
and sidesaddle, a written account reports the girl rode with only a halter
and "in a man's saddle." The ride took place two years after
Paul Revere's famous midnight ride to Lexington, Massachusetts, and Ludington
is often referred to as a "female Paul Revere" (though Revere's
route was a much shorter twelve miles!). This work is a smaller version
of a larger-than-life-size bronze installed in Carmel, New York, the area
where the historic event occurred.
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- MAYNARD DIXON American, 1875-1946
- Wild Horses of Nevada, 1927
- Oil on canvas
- Collection of Karges Family Trust
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- At the age of sixteen, Maynard Dixon sent two sketchbooks
to his artistic idol, Frederic Remington, whose subsequent praise encouraged
Dixon to become an artist. After working as an illustrator in San Francisco,
Dixon left to "go east to see the West," traveling first to the
deserts of Arizona and New Mexico and, later, to Oregon and Nevada.
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- In 1906, Dixon's studio was destroyed in the great San
Francisco earthquake and resulting fire. He then moved to New York City,
where he was exposed to new styles and modern artistic movements from Europe,
some of which, particularly French Impressionism, influenced the use of
color and space in his compositions. Dixon returned to California, where
he was married for a time to photographer Dorothea Lange. Throughout the
rest of his career, Dixon made numerous solitary journeys throughout the
West studying the plains, deserts, and mesas. The resulting works capture
the area's unique spirit and inherent sense of freedom in Western landscapes
like Wild Horses of Nevada.
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- CHARLES SCHREYVOGEL American, 1861-1912
- An Unexpected Enemy, 1900
- Oil on canvas
- Lent by the Rockwell Museum of Western Art, Corning,
New York
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- Charles Schreyvogel earned fame as a painter of the American
West in the early twentieth century, but his knowledge of the frontier
culture was in many ways second-hand. After seeing a traveling performance
of Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show in New York, he made a trip west
to Colorado and Arizona. There, he made sketches and took photographs,
interviewed former soldiers, and collected artifacts. Schreyvogel brought
all of this material back to his Hoboken, New Jersey, studio, where he
composed scenes like An Unexpected Enemy, which expanded the image
of a "wild West."
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- Frederic Remington, the preeminent Western artist of
the era, publicly criticized Schreyvogel's art, dismissing it as inaccurate
and pastiche -- a hodgepodge of other artworks. Schreyvogel rose above
the debate as many supporters defended his work, including President Theodore
Roosevelt.
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- Many of Schreyvogel's compositions feature a trademark
artistic technique of sharp foreshortening, or having an object or figure
appear to move straight toward the viewer. Here, he makes us feel as if
the frightened horse will gallop right out of the picture, enhancing the
sense of danger and drama of the scene.
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- WILLIAM MORRIS HUNT American, 1824-1879
- The Flight of the Night-The Horses of Anahita, undated
- Bronze
- Collection of The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown,
Ohio;
- gift of the Friends of American Art 1978
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- The legend of Anahita, the Persian goddess of the moon
and night, inspired Boston artist William Morris Hunt throughout his career.
In the ancient poem that was his source, Anahita drives her team into darkness
as she flees the approach of dawn. Hunt worked the theme into the design
for a monumental mural commissioned for the assembly chamber of the New
York state capitol, which he completed in 1879. For the finished mural,
Hunt planned The Flight of the Night-the Horses of Anahita as a
foil to The Discoverer, a mural which represented the explorer Columbus
bringing the dawning light of civilization to the New World.
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- Hunt created a number of sculptural studies (including
this one) of the three horses plunging forward, in order to resolve his
difficulty in portraying the explosive action of the middle horse. One
biographer reports the artist was only able to complete the scene after
he witnessed the "fiery and untamable" movement of a friend's
big, black horse rearing violently as it struggled to break free from its
groom.
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- Hunt, an affluent horse lover, spent time in Paris studying
with academic artists including the famed French animal sculptor Antoine-Louis
Barye.
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- WILLIAM HERBERT DUNTON American, 1878-1936
- The Horse Wrangler, 1928
- Oil on canvas
- Lent by San Antonio Art League and Museum
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- William Herbert "Buck" Dunton, a contemporary
of Frederic Remington, was in many ways his heir as an illustrator and
painter of the West. He worked in the first years of the twentieth century
creating Western scenes for magazines and newspapers. A native of Maine,
he was lured to settle permanently in the West, moving to Taos, New Mexico,
in 1914. He later became one of the founding members of the Taos Society
of Artists.
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- In The Horse Wrangler, Dunton portrays the business
of rounding up and caring for the ranch horses, a less exalted assignment
than that of cowboy or cowpuncher, the rustic popular hero of the West.
The horse wrangler arose before the cowboys to gather the horses and spent
much of his time endlessly and thanklessly pursuing the rogues and stragglers.
The Horse Wrangler won Dunton acclaim in the 1928 Texas Wildflower
Competitive Exhibition, a well-publicized art event largely funded by self-made
oilman Edgar B. Davies, which nationally promoted Texas art.
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- Dunton's images of the working horses of the West (like
McMullin, Guide, also in the exhibition) changed stylistically in
the 1920s when he was influenced by the Regionalist artistic styles that
developed partly in response to the Great Depression.
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- JOHN GEORGE BROWN American, born England, 1831-1913
- Her Past Record, circa 1900
- Oil on canvas
- Lent by Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown,
Massachusetts; anonymous gift 96.11
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- John George Brown moved from England to New York City
in 1853 to study at the National Academy of Design. Working in a realist
style, he became a leading painter of American genre subjects. Many of
his early works depict children in the gritty city, but, later in his career,
he painted rural subjects. One theme he returned to frequently was that
of old folks, but here he goes a step further to include an old horse.
The title, Her Past Record, suggests a tall tale is being spun about
the old gray, clearly a nag. Are we to believe this horse had an illustrious
past on the racetrack or that the owner has a penchant for storytelling?
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- Probably made on a summer sojourn in Vermont, the painting
is one of numerous barn interiors that Brown painted between 1897 and 1908.
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- JOHN STEUART CURRY American, 1897-1946
- Belgian Stallions, 1938
- Oil on panel
- Lent by National Academy Museum, New York
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- John Steuart Curry, along with Thomas Hart Benton and
Grant Wood, was a leader of the Regionalist art movement of the 1930s,
which turned away from European modernist trends in favor of depicting
rural scenes in America's heartland. Curry was born in Kansas and grew
up on his family farm. He studied in Chicago and Paris, but his art remained
firmly focused on the Midwest throughout his career, even when living and
painting in Connecticut.
- In 1936, Curry assumed a position as the first artist-in-residence
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's innovative rural art program,
which promoted art and encouraged amateur artists in agricultural areas.
In this post, Curry canvassed the region, meeting artists and organizing
exhibitions. In the process, he found local subjects, including livestock
in the agricultural program, of artistic interest. Curry's Belgian Stallions
originated from a drawing that illustrated the April 1938 cover of Wisconsin
Country Magazine. It was based on sketches that the artist made of
the university's prized draft horses, on campus and at the 1937 state stock
show.
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- EDWARD TROYE American, born Switzerland, 1808-1874
- A Study of Lexington, undated
- Oil on wooden panel
- Private collection
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- Although mainly an itinerant artist, Swiss-born Edward
Troye settled for periods of time in the Bluegrass counties of Kentucky
and in Alabama, working as a prominent painter of racehorses. He became
close friends with leading Thoroughbred breeders. By the time he painted
this version of the record-setting Lexington for the Alexander family of
Woodburn Farm, he had already completed numerous portraits of the horse.
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- Lexington, sired by Boston, came to Woodburn in 1857
after Robert A. Alexander purchased him for the princely sum of fifteen
thousand dollars, even though the horse had gone blind at the end of his
racing career. Alexander's pricey gamble paid off. From 1857 until his
death in 1875, Lexington produced hundreds of winners and led the American
Sire List sixteen times, a record still held today. Most Thoroughbreds,
including Man o'War and recent sensation Rachel Alexandra, can be traced
back to him.
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- Troye's work helped to document the lineage and foundation
sires of Thoroughbreds. Many of his portraits were published as prints
in the first racing magazines of the era and in the volume Race Horses
of America, which Troye published in 1867.
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- NICHOLAS WINFIELD SCOTT LEIGHTON
- American, 1847-1898
- St. Julien, Champion Trotter, Driven by Orrin Hickok, undated
- Oil on canvas
- Lent by Harness Racing Museum and Hall of Fame, Goshen,
NY
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- Nicholas Leighton, born in Maine, became a well-known
painter of horse portraits after moving to Boston. He gained recognition
through mass-marketed lithographs of his paintings, particularly those
produced by the famous printmaking firm Currier & Ives. The company
capitalized on the great popularity of harness racing in the nineteenth
century and priced their prints for the average person, bringing not only
the names of the period's most notable trotters into American middle-class
homes, but also their pictures.
- Foaled in 1869, St. Julien (the son of Volunteer and
Flora) spent the early part of his life pulling a milk wagon in Orange
County, New York. He was sold for $600 to James Galway of New York City,
who named the gelding after seeing the name on a bottle of wine. Currier
& Ives first distributed Leighton's print in 1880 after Orrin Hickok
drove St. Julien to a world championship, trotting the mile in two minutes
and twelve and three-quarter seconds, a record they themselves broke the
following year.
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- WILLIAM HERBERT DUNTON American, 1878-1936
- McMullin, Guide, 1934
- Oil on canvas
- Lent by Stark Museum of Art, Orange, Texas
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- Late in his career, William Dunton often depicted older
cowboy "types," whose jobs were beginning to disappear as the
West became more modernized. Here, he paints John T. "Curley John"
McMullin, a hunting guide who initially came to New Mexico from Oklahoma
(where he was a good friend of Belle Starr) as a government trapper. Very
popular in the Taos area for his cheery disposition and kindness, written
accounts of his funeral confirm how important his horse was to him and
others like him: "Mac's favorite horse was led behind the funeral
coach with three horsemen leading the procession and with about 15 horsemen
following. At the cemetery, Doughbelly Price, an old friend of Mac, delivered
the last words of the old cowpuncher while seated on his horse."
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- DEBORAH BUTTERFIELD American, born 1949
- EastWest, 2002
- Bronze
- The Art Museum at the University of Kentucky; purchase:
The Collectors Fund 2003.1
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- Montana sculptor Deborah Butterfield concentrates her
art almost exclusively on revealing the expressive gesture and presence
of horses. She aims "to reflect how much a horse is part of his environment"
by using found materials that retain their own essential history. She assembles
these materials into evocative sculptures. Her earliest works were huge
plaster mares, followed by a series of horses made of sticks and mud, scrap
metal, and steel. In more recent years, she has begun making horses that
are characterized by an open configuration and an emphasis on linear elements,
as if she were drawing in space. Her current works -- including EastWest
-- are unique bronze casts. Constructed from found wood and organic
materials, Butterfield casts each horse in sections, welds the bronze sections
together, and then individually patinas each element to resemble
the weathered pieces of wood that served as her inspiration.
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and Heartbeats: the Horse in American Art
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