Equestrian - Polo

The horse has been the most consistently depicted animal in the history of sporting art, and the tradition of equestrian illustration — encompassing classical dressage, competitive show jumping, cavalry horsemanship and the mounted sports that developed from military riding traditions — is among the richest and most technically demanding in the entire sporting print tradition. The antique prints in this collection document the art of horsemanship across its full range, from the disciplined movements of the managed horse in the classical tradition to the rapid improvisation of polo played at speed across a grass field.

The classical equestrian tradition — the haute école of Versailles and the Spanish Riding School, with its repertoire of precisely defined movements requiring years of training for both horse and rider — generated illustration of considerable refinement and technical accuracy. The great equestrian manuals of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, illustrated with engraved plates showing horses performing the levade, the courbette, the capriole and the other movements of the high school, combine scientific observation of equine anatomy and movement with the formal elegance of baroque visual culture. These plates are among the finest examples of animal illustration in the entire printed tradition, and the best examples reward both the eye and the intellect of the equestrian enthusiast.

Show jumping and competitive equitation developed through the nineteenth century as the military horsemanship traditions of the European cavalry were adapted for civilian sport, and the illustrated press covered the major equestrian competitions — the Dublin Horse Show, the Olympic equestrian events from 1900 — with increasing attention as the sport attracted a growing following beyond the military and aristocratic circles in which it originated. The technical demands of competitive jumping, which requires a precise coordination of horse and rider across a sequence of obstacles of varying difficulty, provided illustrators with subjects of considerable visual drama and athletic interest.

Polo — the ancient Central Asian game of mounted stick-and-ball that was codified into a modern sport by British cavalry officers in India in the 1860s — spread rapidly through the British Empire and generated its own distinctive illustrative tradition. The combination of equestrian skill, physical contact, high speed and the strategic complexity of team play gave polo a visual energy that translated readily to illustration, and the illustrated press of the 1880s and 1890s covered the major polo tournaments — at Hurlingham, Ranelagh and the American venues — with the same attention it brought to other fashionable sports. Polo’s association with the military, with the aristocracy and with the imperial world of the Indian subcontinent gave it a social cachet that made its imagery of particular interest to a wide audience.

The Australian equestrian tradition — the stockhorse culture of the pastoral industry, the bush racing that developed as a colonial adaptation of the English turf tradition, and the polo played on the great pastoral stations of Queensland and New South Wales — generated illustration of a different character from the European classical tradition, reflecting the different social world and geographic context in which horsemanship was practised in the colonies. Australian equestrian prints are of particular interest to collectors with connections to the pastoral and sporting traditions of outback Australia.

For collectors of sporting art, military history or the social world of the British Empire, antique equestrian and polo prints offer material of considerable variety and consistent visual quality. The combination of equine beauty, athletic accomplishment and social distinction that characterises the best examples of the genre makes them among the most appealing objects in the broader sporting art tradition.