I I 8 THE HORSE. 



CHAPTER XI. 



EXAMINATION OF THE WORKS OF SOME PAINTERS 

 OF HORSES. 



I shall rapidly review some artists whose brushes have 

 been specially devoted to the reproduction of horses. In 

 order to avoid too distant an antiquity, I will commence 

 with Charles Parrocel (1688-1752), son of a battle painter. 

 He served in the cavalry, where his taste for horses 

 made him desirous of daily contact with the object of his 

 studies. 



Inspection of his work is conducive to regret that he 

 did not profit more by the living model in order to avoid 

 the errors of the painters of horses, who were his 

 predecessors. It was unnecessary to draw from nature 

 to give an amplitude to the croup of his animals as 

 extravagant as any of the compositions of his artistic 

 ancestors. 



Parrocel absolutely neglected the anatomical portion, 

 the heads being especially ill-constructed, and he made 

 no advance on the equestrian fashion bequeathed him by 

 the spiritedness of Bourguignon and the delicacy of Van 

 der Meulen, which does not prevent the recognition of 

 animated military compositions in his work as well as 

 considerable talent as colourist. 



The equestrian portrait of young Louis XV., now 

 in the museum of Versailles, ought to have been a 

 conscientious labour on the part of the painter ; yet the 

 horse is thoroughly deformed and has all the defects of 

 the one given (in fig. 44), a copy taken from an etching 

 by Parrocel, ornamenting the Treatise on Equitation, 

 (cavalry school of la Gueriniere). 



Carl Vernet (1758-1835), born a little after the demise 

 of Parrocel, was a brilliant cavalier and a man of the 

 world, moving in the highest society. He won the prize 



