Landseer’s ‘Pretty Horse Breaker’

Edwin Landseer’s The Shrew Tamed (also known as The Pretty Horse Breaker), on first sight, seems to be a study in interspecies harmony, affection and trust. It’s a beautifully serene work, and Landseer’s handling of the paintwork in the straw, and on the mare’s silken coat and bay dapples is exquisite.

We also see his hallmark of endowing animals with expressive characters as nuanced and significant as in human portraiture of that period.

However, a closer reading reveals this painting as a demonstration of the taming techniques of the ‘horse whisperer’ John Solomon Rarey, performed here by one of his star pupils, the English equestrienne, Ann Gilbert.

In the 1850’s and 60’s American-born Rarey travelled the world popularising his technique for taming aggressive horses. His method, which earned him a great deal of money and made him famous, involved laying horses down using ropes, then stroking them and leaning on them until they ‘appeared calm’.

The Pretty Horsebreaker depicts the instant when the bay mare submits to Rarey’s Method; we see the leather strap (that was used to tie up her foreleg) cast aside to the left of the composition, indicating the mare is now unrestrained, and is choosing to protectively wrap her neck around Gilbert and to share her deep straw bed.

‘Laying a horse down’ is not the same as teaching a horse to lie down – the latter being a groundwork exercise that we see in equine entertainments, such as Cavalia, and which is taught without force, in gradual stages.

The controversial technique of forcibly laying a horse down is still used today, but some horse trainers have criticised it, arguing the trance-like state the technique induces is actually ‘tonic immobility’, a shutting down of the motor system in expectation of death. Its critics question how constructive it is to ‘lay down’ a large prey animal, not to speak of the hazards of leg damage, and a horse’s heavy intestinal organs being affected.

Unfortunately, the horse world today is as full of self-proclaimed horse-whisperers as it was in 1861. Playing in the gap between ‘tradition’ and evidence-based practice, they offer quick fixes using faddish ideas and concepts.

However, at the 1861 Royal Academy Exhibition when the picture was first exhibited, critics were far more disturbed by the depiction of a languorous woman dominating a powerful animal and some concluded Landseer was paying tribute not to Ann Gilbert, but to the famous courtesan Catherine Walters (aka “Skittles”), mistress to the Prince of Wales, equestrienne and wearer of the tightest riding clothes in England.

Landseer may have made reference to “Skittles” – it’s possible – the women looked similar, but it’s evident from his diaries he was close friends with Gilbert, so the claim it is a portrait of her is most likely. It seems, finally, while different readings have been applied to this work, what continues to shine through is a timeless moment of tender accord and mutual feeling between horse and human.

Image Caption:

Edwin Henry Landseer (1802-1873) The Shrew Tamed (also known as The Pretty Horse Breaker), 1861. Source Wikimedia Commons.