Recently SH and I were in London and visited the National Gallery and the British Museum on the same day. I was fascinated by the horses we saw in the art.

First, we paid our respects to Whistlejacket in the National Gallery.  George Stubbs painted the Marquess of Rockingham’s magnificent stallion after spending 18 months dissecting horses to understand their musculature. The portrait hangs in the center of its gallery so when you first enter the long adjacent gallery, you see the horse rearing skyward beyond the doors. Whistlejacket is a magnificent golden colored bay and his intelligent soft eyes gaze directly at the viewer, asking for admiring attention.

I first saw Whistlejacket 10 years ago and was utterly stunned by the scale and vivid life of the portrait. As I stood staring at him, an older man nodded and said that he came regularly to visit Whistlejacket. We stood together admiring the gloss of his hindquarters, the sheen of his chest, the brightness of his white stocking, and the golden waterfall of his tail.

Second in the British Museum, we saw the Greek horses prancing under their riders on their way to honor Athena on her special feast day. The horses and riders are part of the frieze which once adorned the Parthenon (completed in 438 BE) until Lord Elgin brought all of the marbles to London in a dubious act of colonial acquisition. I am not sure how many horses and riders are depicted on the frieze but they are all unique, caught in various attitudes of gesturing for the men and cavorting for the horses. Tightly reined in, the necks of the horses arch dramatically in restrained energy.

Third, and also in the British Museum, we saw the horses depicted in the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal’s  lion hunt (859 BCE). These stone panels celebrate the king’s prowess hunting lions as a metaphor for his (untested) martial prowess. The horses are not the center of attention. The wounded and dying lions are. These horses are more ritualized, more abstract because they do not present individual horses but the idea of HORSE in service to man.