"The 'Piebald' Horse," Paulus Potter, 1650-4.
Potter (1625-54) was a Dutch painter, the son of an artist, whose short life was filled by a passion for painting animals.
Although he did a handful of portraits of humans (including a self-portrait), his nearly 100-painting oeuvre is almost entirely paintings of animals in a landscape. Although he was a painter of the Baroque era, his style was admired by the later Romantics who embraced his depictions of noble animals.
Here we have a piebald horse, standing majestically against a cloudy sky and rolling meadows. There's a manor house to the right and if you squint, you can find a horseman with some hounds, but this horse dominates all, fierce and free.
He often included humans, and one painting, "The Punishments of a Hunter," shows a huntsman being put on trial by woodland animals!
He died sadly young, only 28, but there's a charming memorial statue in his home town of Enkhuizen, of him sitting and sketching a distant statue of a goat.
From the Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
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