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Stubbs' output includes history paintings, but his greatest skill was in painting animals (such as horses, dogs and lions), perhaps influenced by his love and study of anatomy. His series of paintings on the theme of a lion attacking a horse are early and significant examples of the Romantic movement that emerged in the late 18th century.
The Sorrows of Love (French: Les Malheurs de l'amour) is a 1790 genre painting by the French artist Louis-Léopold Boilly. [1] [2] In the early stages of his career Boilly largely produced genre paintings and portraits before switching to the street scenes of Paris for which he is best known.
In May of that year the work was sold to the art dealership Tooth and Sons and renamed Première rêverie. That August the dealership sold the painting to a person named Groves. [4] The painting was later gifted to the New Orleans Museum of Art by Mr. and Mrs. Chapman H. Hyams; the museum's catalogue lists it as Whisperings of Love. [5]
As a student, Degas had filled his notebooks with drawings of horses. During a tour of breeding farms with Paul Valpincon and after exposure to horse races, Degas appreciated the movement of the horses and the colors of the jockeys uniforms. He wanted to make his paintings seem spontaneous as if he'd captured a passing moment. [2]
[7] [8] This style of cropping was uncommon in painting in general before the invention of photography. Degas has also been suggested to have taken influences from English paintings when painting At the Races in the Countryside. The green coloring of the painting is suggestive of an influence from English horse racing scenes. [9]
The painting shows a nude, redheaded woman riding a black, frenetic horse. The horse bares its teeth, its tongue hanging out. Its nostrils are dilated and foam runs from its mouth. The woman riding the horse tightly clasps its neck with her eyes closed, her loose hair fanning out and flowing upwards to mingle with the horse's mane.
The painter wished to represent with various symbols the war and peace between heavenly and common love formulated by Plato. On one side he painted Heavenly Love wrestling with Common Love and pulling him by the hair: this is the philosophy and most sacred law that removes the soul from vice, raising it on high.
The Horses of Neptune, illustration by Walter Crane, 1893. Horse symbolism is the study of the representation of the horse in mythology, religion, folklore, art, literature and psychoanalysis as a symbol, in its capacity to designate, to signify an abstract concept, beyond the physical reality of the quadruped animal.