Horse painting

Aesthetic Wall Art offers a wide range of horse paintings selected from the best artists.

We offer a variety of horse paintings that could enrich your interior decoration. Whether it’s horse paintings in ink or watercolor, you can find a variety of artworks on Tableaux du Monde.

What does a horse painting symbolize?

A horse painting symbolizes the strength, speed and glory associated with this magnificent animal. Horses are often associated with success, prosperity, luck and wealth. This is why these animal paintings have been popular works of art for interiors and decoration for so long.

The history of the horse in art.

The human-horse relationship has a little over 30,000 years of history. That said, we are just beginning to understand the significance behind this incredible relationship. This relationship is strongly linked to human existence in general. It is a shared history that is best illustrated by the metaphor embodied in the mythological hybrid form of the centaur.

Even before the invention of writing, early man left us representations of his way of life and lifestyle. Rock art is found extensively in Africa and Europe, including numerous sites throughout France and Spain. A common theme since the dawn of mankind has been the depiction of large wild animals, such as bison, deer and, of course, the horse. In fact, the horse accounts for about 30% of all rock art representations. They are painted, engraved on stone walls or carved in bones. The most famous Paleolithic horse paintings come from the Lascaux and Chauvet caves in France.

There are of course different theories and interpretations of rock art in general. Some theories believe that they are part of rituals or religious ceremonies to capture the spirit of an animal before hunting it, since hunting was a matter of survival.

However, if most of the species represented on the walls of the caves could serve as prey, the bones found suggest that they were not representative of the species actually hunted. In some caves, for example, the species represented do not correspond to the bones found on the sites. For example, at Lascaux, where images of horses are most common, the bones found are mostly reindeer bones. This animal does not appear in the rock paintings, although it seems to have been the main source of food for the inhabitants of this period.

It is interesting to note that the different shapes and colors found in the rock art have long been considered as symbolic expressions. They were considered to be abstract idealizations rather than presentations of real life. Researchers conducted a recent study on the DNA of bones from different locations throughout Europe as well as Siberia. They indicated that prehistoric cave paintings of horses were realistic representations of the Paleolithic environment. In particular, they show a spotted horse, a common species of this era.

Such representations suggest a high level of perception among cave artists. The obvious questions that arise from this are: why were they so perceptive, what was the precise function of the rock paintings, and what motivated early man to create paintings that we now consider art? We may never know the precise answers, but we do know that this was the beginning of something that has never stopped since.

What are the most famous horse paintings?

Here is a list of some of the most famous horse paintings:

Guernica by Pablo Picasso
This horse painting was made by the Spanish artist Pablo in 1937 with the intention of making the paintings more powerful and moving during World War II.

Whistlejacket by George Stubbs
The horse painting “Whistlejacket” by British artist George Stubbs beautifully depicts the racehorse of the Marquis of Rockingham, then Prime Minister of Great Britain.

Rosa Bonheur’s Horse Fair
This 1852 painting by French artist Rosa Bonheur depicts merchants selling their horses at market.