“They are what we call literati painters — artists of classical cultivation who dominated much of Chinese art history and often held official posts,” says Ma Shunping from the Palace Museum in Beijing, curator of an upcoming exhibition on ancient China’s equine art and culture, drawn in part from the museum’s own collection.

“Their images invite contemplation, serving as vehicles for reflection on unrecognized talent, constrained strength, or virtue awaiting its moment.”

Standing in sharp contrast are the Western battle scenes, such as the Alexander Mosaic from Pompeii or The Battle of San Romano by Florentine painter Paolo Uccello (1397-1475) where horses are locked in violent motion, carrying history forward through conquest.

Even when horses are used as mirrors of thoughts and emotions, Western art diverges sharply from the Chinese tradition.

The work of Theodore Gericault (1791-1824), a pioneer of Romanticism in French painting and arguably the most influential artist in redefining the horse in modern art, offers a telling example.

Far removed from the composed steeds of Baroque equestrian portraiture, his horses emerge as forces of nature, expressive and unstable, their unsettled bodies echoing the psychological and political upheavals of post-Revolutionary Europe.

Rooted in early Romanticism, Gericault’s approach was informed by an obsessive study of equine anatomy — a pursuit that had largely eluded his Chinese counterparts, who placed greater emphasis on conveying spirit than on physical likeness.

Chinese art underwent its own transformation, particularly after the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911. Yet, the horse endured as a charged cultural image, nowhere more powerfully than in the works of Xu Beihong (1895-1953), the most renowned painter of horses in modern China.