Braunes Pferd im Stall

In 1818 Théodore Géricault was 27 and about a year away from the huge, scandalous canvas that would make his name, The Raft of the Medusa. In between, he kept returning to the thing he loved most, which was horses. This brown horse stood in the stables of the Haras Dauphin, a stud farm in the Bois de Boulogne on the edge of Paris, and it is one of four studies Géricault made there that year. He was not composing a scene. He was watching how light fell on a real animal's flank and how muscle sat under the coat, working fast with a loaded brush. The horse wears its halter and faces its manger, caught on an ordinary afternoon in the stall.