Famous horse paintings include George Stubbs's Whistlejacket (about 1762), Rosa Bonheur's The Horse Fair (1852 to 1855) and Franz Marc's The Large Blue Horses (1911). In each, the animal matters more than its rider.
Painters loved the horse because it could show speed, fear and weight as no seated figure could. The twelve pictures below span more than eleven centuries, from Tang dynasty China to Germany in 1911, and in four of them no one rides at all.
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How These Were Chosen
Each of the twelve passed at least one of two simple tests. Its title names a horse, a herd or a horse race. Or the animal itself, through its pose, its speed, its fear or its color, holds the meaning of the picture.
A portrait where the mount only holds the rider up fails both. The two equestrian portraits on this list, of Napoleon and of a little Spanish prince, stay in because the horse sets the pose and the mood of the whole picture.
12. Han Gan, Night-Shining White (about 750)
Tied to a thick wooden post, a white horse twists and will not stand still. Its eye burns, its nostrils flare and its hoofs seem to dance. The painting is attributed to Han Gan and dates to about 750, under the Tang dynasty.
The sheet is small, barely a foot wide, and the horse on it was one of the favorite chargers of Emperor Xuanzong, who ruled China from 712 to 756. Its name, Night-Shining White, became the title of the picture, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Han Gan came to the subject from far below the court. As a boy, he worked in a wine merchant's shop, until the painter and poet Wang Wei saw him drawing in the sand with a stick and paid him a yearly allowance.
He went on to train under Cao Ba, a painter who also specialized in horses. Later, when the emperor questioned his methods, Han Gan answered that every horse in the imperial stables was his teacher.
He had no shortage of models, because horses were a court passion under Xuanzong. In the first dozen years of his reign, the number owned by the state rose from 240,000 to 430,000. The court even trained some of them to dance at the Thousand Autumn Holiday, the celebration of the emperor's birthday.
The most prized horses came with a legend attached. Chinese myths described the mounts of Central Asia as "celestial steeds" that sweated blood and were really dragons in disguise. With its burning eye and restless hoofs, Han Gan's charger looks like one of them.
Han Gan left no signature or seal on the painting. His name survives thanks to a later ruler, Li Yu, king of the Southern Tang, one of the states that divided China after the Tang dynasty fell. Li Yu wrote a single column of characters on the scroll: "Night-Shining White painted by Han Gan."
After him, owners and admirers kept adding seals and comments to the painting and its borders for more than a thousand years, among them the Song dynasty painter Mi Fu and, centuries later, the Qing emperor Qianlong.
Not every hand that touched the scroll signed it. In a 2014 study of Han Gan's horses, Shelley Drake Hawks finds evidence of retouching on the rear hooves and the halter.
For me, the whole picture turns on that thick post. It's the one thing on the sheet that doesn't move, and the taut rope ties all the animal's energy to that single point.
At a Glance
Artist: Han Gan (active about 742 to 756)
Painted: About 750
Medium: Handscroll, ink on paper
Where to see it: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1977.78)
About This Painting
How big is Han Gan's Night Shining White? The painted image measures 30.8 by 34 cm (12 1/8 by 13 3/8 in.). Mounted as a handscroll with its later inscriptions, the whole object runs 11.4 meters (37 ft. 5 1/8 in.).
What inscriptions are on Night Shining White? The scroll carries twenty numbered colophons, written from the Song dynasty to 1910, along with seals from many collectors. The Qianlong emperor alone wrote four of the colophons, dated between 1746 and 1757, and added a fifth inscription.
What did Du Fu say about Han Gan's horses? The poet Du Fu (712 to 770), a contemporary of Han Gan, wrote that Han Gan painted only the flesh of horses and not their bones. The same lines call Han Gan a disciple of Cao Ba who fathomed the special features of horses.
How did the Met acquire Night Shining White? The Metropolitan Museum of Art bought the scroll in 1977 with a gift from The Dillon Fund. Its accession number is 1977.78.
11. Paolo Uccello, Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino at the Battle of San Romano (probably 1438 to 1440)
At the center of a cavalry charge, a white horse rises in full light, carrying the commander of the Florentine troops. Paolo Uccello painted the scene in tempera on a wooden panel of poplar, probably between 1438 and 1440.
The rider is Niccolò da Tolentino, who led Florence against Siena at the battle of San Romano in 1432. He wears a mazzocchio, a large hexagonal hat of red and gold velvet, and thrusts a commander's baton forward in his right hand.
Around him, the mounts of the Florentine knights look strangely stiff, and only part of the reason lies in Uccello's hand.