Horse Power

#4507 Shoeing_Sir Edwin Henry Landseer

Landseer’s subjects deliver social history, animal husbandry and the power of the horse that commands human service and fellow animal respect. The bay mare, ‘Old Betty’, holds centre stage while the donkey and bloodhound take the place of Betty’s own foals, by now grown up. Note too the caged blackbird. Revealed in 1844, it won awards and critics in equal measure, such as the Gold Medal in Paris 1855 versus rejection of its then unpopular ‘glossy’ older Dutch style. Today perhaps it conjures up reminiscence of a lost age and way of life.