Horses were still abundant in the German countryside in the middle of the last century when I grew up. Cars were rare and tractors small, but horses came in all colours and shapes. My memories are imbued by their yellow manes, their speaking ears and their sweet smell. Then one day they were gone. The farmers had given up their farms and sold their horses. By 1970 the old equestrian world that had existed for about 6,000 years had ended. Forty years later I went back to this moment and, as the historian I had become, tried to grasp the world we had lost.
Horses — real horses, in flesh, blood and bones — may have become sports items, status symbols and pastoral guides through female puberty, but their memories and images still haunt our dreams and narratives, art, literature and histories.
Farewell to the Horse: The Final Century of Our Relationship by Ulrich Raulff is published by Penguin. The Qatar Goodwood Festival concludes today
Washington Rallying the Americans at the Battle of Princeton, William Ranney, 1848, above
This painter drew heavily on David’s icon of Napoleon, thus turning Washington, the historical forerunner, into the pictorial heir of Bonaparte. As an emblem of energy, the horse takes history back to the realm of myth.
The Misfits, John Huston, 1961
This shows the end of the equestrian era in a double perspective: the horse acting as an object of pity and as a movie actor, competing with other beauties such as Marilyn Monroe.
Madame Bovary, Flaubert, 1856
In the carriage scene Flaubert may well hide Madame Bovary and her lover from the daylight of prose, but the rhythm and the noises of the coach, the pace of the two sweaty horses, give away their erotic truth. In all those great 19th-century novels of adultery — Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, Effi Briest — it is the horse who, through his body and his fate, silently says what otherwise has to stay mute.
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Parthenon Frieze, Phidias, 5th Century BC
Probably the most inspiring horse race in art history. Look at the dynamics of that cavalry, its speed and its beauty, and you will understand why. The Greeks, sharp observers of all things humane, also had a precise intuition for the horse, its natural nobility as well as its threatening mass.
The Queen on Surprise, Ascot, 1961
The young amazon queen on her grey horse Surprise in the early morning of the Ascot races seems to encapsulate the famous horse sense of the British. Since the 17th century the story of horse racing and breeding in Britain was closely linked to the monarchy. And it was the Crown who changed the role of the horse from an instrument of power to a symbol of speed, sport and excellence.
The Race of the Barberi (or Berber) horses, Theodore Géricault, 1817
The Parthenon frieze was clearly on Géricault’s mind when he sketched this race — riderless horses racing through the streets of Rome. Géricault dreamt of a canvas of 9 or 10m. But for unknown reasons he stopped, leaving but a dozen oil paintings and sketches. These are among the most fascinating, vivid and fiery horse paintings.