Horse

The horse is a small plaster model, one of about 11 casts after antique and Renaissance sculpture that Van Gogh kept with him. He painted it early in 1886, when he was enrolled at the academy in Antwerp. Students there drew from casts in class, and painting was something you had to practise at home, on your own time and at your own expense. He used cardboard instead of canvas because it cost far less, which was the usual arithmetic for him that winter. The plaster horse itself was kept by the family and belongs to the Van Gogh Museum today, so the model and the study of it ended up in the same collection.