Custom paintings from photos

Man’s eternal love and respect for the horse in work, war, and sport can already be seen in early cave paintings between 17,000-18,000 years old, and in horse paintings found at Ardeche, in Southern France, made by a Cro Magnon artist that are probably over 20,000 years old.

The horse was a favorite theme of Chinese painters. Han Kan, one of the most famous ancient Chinese painters, devoted himself almost exclusively to horse painting. The horse is the seventh sign of the Chinese zodiac and an emblem of speed and perseverance, symbolizing strength, courage and the swiftness of life.

With the development of the thoroughbred, a horse breed created to race and originating in Eighteenth Century England, paintings of horses gained a new significance. Breeding Arabian and Turkish stallions with English mares to produce thoroughbreds made the colorful sport of horseracing popular throughout Europe. Horse paintings popular at that time were usually individual portraits of famous racehorses or illustrious breeding lines.

Victorian England specialized in imperialist equine art – huge canvases depicting spectacular cavalry charges trampling the natives – much of it painted badly.

Throughout Europe, portraits of famous leaders, royalty, and wealthy or influential aristocrats were most often painted on horseback. In Dresden, Germany, there is a 1,200-square-yard porcelain tile painting (the largest porcelain painting in the world) of all the Wettin kings, princes, and dukes on horseback. 24,000 porcelain tiles from the Meissen porcelain works.

Since the Nineteen Century, the horse has been the quintessential symbol of the early American frontier and of the Wild West period of US history. Equine art of the Old West variety is a genre of its own and finds expression in every kind of horse painting from western artist George Catlin’s outstanding portraits of Native Americans with their ponies to primitive native art horse paintings…and all the way to ‘paint-by-numbers’ horse paintings by amateur artists and horse lovers.

Horse lovers the world over are notorious for collecting horse paintings, drawings, statues and photographs and the art world will no doubt continue to keep them well supplied.