Two Horses

With its head silhouetted in profile against the sky, the brown horse dominates this small painting, its strong physique captured from the side. In contrast, the dappled grey horse is viewed face on. This frontal pose allows the artist to show off his skills in depicting forms which recede back into space, a difficult technique known as foreshortening. While the background landscape appears loose and sketchy, the horses are expertly observed. The tack of both horses – from the reins to the saddles – are depicted with accuracy, the metallic elements of the bridles and stirrups glinting in the light. The horses are painted with much more detail than the figure of the groom, his pared back features given only minimal attention. 

Abraham van Calraet (1642-1722) was a respected and sought-after Dutch artist who specialised in equestrian subjects, often painting stable scenes and portraits of horses for his clients in Dordrecht. As a pupil of the Dutch Italianate painter Aelbert Cuyp (1620-91), many of his works were often mistaken for those by Cuyp and it is only relatively recently that this, and other works at Dulwich Picture Gallery, have been reattributed to Calraet. Horses awaiting their riders was a recurring theme in Calraet’s work and this example harbours the authenticity that made nineteenth-century visitors to the Gallery so admire the ‘air of unmingled truth’ in this painting which ‘cannot be surpassed’ – as was written in an early catalogue of the Collection from 1824.