Black Horse

Inscription: Oh! vivre, ce n'est qu' à épuiser mon effort atteindre, ma consolence, anéantir mon être!”
In my personal view, the horses that Xu Beihong painted were based on the anatomy courses he took at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. Through anatomical principles, he studied the modeling and movement of horses. When Xu painted horses, he did not depict the beauty of their exterior forms; he embodied their intrinsic spirit and energy. This inherent quality could only have been presented through the study of anatomy. Xu Beihong painted horses before he went to France, but we now better understand the horses he painted after he became famous. If we put all the horses he painted over the course of his artistic career together and compare the horses he painted before, during, and after his time in France, we can see the evolution of his horse painting. The horses that Xu Beihong painted after he achieved fame can be traced back to 1928.
-Philippe Cinquini