Study of a Harnessed Arabian Horse

This canvas was never finished. A white Arab horse stands in profile, saddled and harnessed, while the left side of the picture is still almost bare, with only the sketched profile of a man and a couple of tools lying on the ground. It has sometimes been taken for a study for the horse of Mustapha Pasha in Gros's Battle of Aboukir of 1806, now at Versailles, and the Louvre calls that link a mistake.

The canvas was in the sale of Gros's studio after his death in 1835, under the title it still carries, and went for 207 francs. In the 20th century it belonged to the French critic Claude Roger-Marx. In 1959 the dealer Knoedler tried to export it, it was stopped at customs, and the museum in Algiers, a city then still under French rule, bought it instead. Twelve years later, with Algeria independent, the Louvre bought the study from the Algerian state for 25,000 francs.