Has equine art kept pace with our understanding of the horse?

George Stubbs, Mares and Foals in a River Landscape. Photographed during the exhibition at MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom. A conversation in front of this painting became the starting point for this essay.

Years ago, I joined a press trip organised by the Mauritshuis to visit the George Stubbs exhibition at MK Gallery in the United Kingdom. While standing in front of one of Stubbs' paintings depicting a group of mares and foals, I found myself in conversation with two museum professionals. We weren't discussing composition, colour or anatomy. Instead, we were talking about the horses.

As someone who has spent much of my life around them, I was reading a story written in body language. The attentiveness of a mare towards her foal. The quiet confidence of young horses that feel safe. The subtle distance between the animals and the gentle interactions that revealed relationships rather than simply a composition. What fascinated me wasn't that I saw something others didn't, but that the painting revealed an entirely different narrative once you understood the language the horses were speaking. Stubbs hadn't simply painted horses; he had observed them.

That conversation has stayed with me ever since because it left me with a question I find myself asking more and more often: has equine art kept pace with our understanding of the horse?

For centuries, the horse has represented far more than itself. It has symbolised power, status, speed and strength. It carried kings into battle, worked the land, won Olympic medals and eventually became a companion and family member. Throughout history, we have asked the horse to represent almost every human ideal imaginable. Yet beneath all those roles is simply a horse.

Our understanding of that horse has changed enormously. Over the past few decades we have learned more about equine behaviour, communication and welfare than any generation before us. Riders, trainers, veterinarians and owners have become increasingly skilled at recognising subtle signs of relaxation, tension, curiosity and stress. The horse itself has not changed, but our understanding of it has. Which makes me wonder whether our visual language has evolved alongside that understanding.

As a curator, I regularly encounter paintings and photographs celebrating power, freedom and spirit. Sometimes they do exactly that. At other times, however, I quietly read a different story. An expression that suggests tension rather than confidence, or a posture that speaks of vigilance rather than ease. Not because the work lacks technical skill, but because the horse appears to be communicating something different from what the artist intended.

This is not an argument for painting only calm horses. Fear, conflict and struggle all have a place in art. What interests me is something else entirely. Does the artist recognise the difference? Because there is a profound difference between choosing to depict a frightened horse and unintentionally mistaking fear for spirit. Knowledge doesn't restrict artistic freedom; it expands it. The more we understand the horse, the more deliberate our artistic choices become.

Standing in front of Stubbs' mares and foals all those years ago, I realised I wasn't simply looking at beautifully painted animals. I was witnessing a conversation that existed entirely independently of the viewer. The horses weren't performing for us; they were simply being horses.

Perhaps that is where contemporary equine art has its greatest opportunity. For centuries we have painted what the horse has meant to us. Perhaps the next chapter begins by asking what the horse is saying.

Joyce Ter Horst

Equine art curator

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