The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1890-04-28
Artists Who Have vainly Striven to
Portray the Noble Animal in
Action.
In What Respects They Have
Failed and the Adequate
Reasons Therefor.
Success of NJ. Morot, and the Early Train
Ing that Prepared Him for His Mas
terpieces-His Device.

point of fact he has never used photo
graphic document; furthermore, he had al
ready made his observations of the move
ments of the horse before Mr.. Muybridge
revealed to the artistic world the results of
his remarkable experiments. NJ. Morot has
always been great lover of animals. His
monkey and his Scotch deer hound are his
inseparable companions, and since he was a
small boy he has always been an enthus-
iastic horseman. While youth at Nancy
he spent nearly all his time in the manage
of a friend of his family who was a, horse
trainer; and; if fortune had not made him a
painter, his tastes, he says, would have
made him a riding master. In this
riding school he began to observe the
horse, and his attention was directed
to it's movements by the theory of the de-
composition of the steps which the profess
sors taught. In this theory M. Morot, con-
trolling facts merely by his eye, found
much false doctrine, and, with the enthusi-
asm of his years and the love of horses for
guides, he discussed the matter point by
point with the riding masters of Nancy,
had fine sand laid down in the manege to
catch the footprints, watched, noted and
expounded, refusing to accept the tradi-
tional doctrines. In order to facilitate his
observations he invented little apparatus
composed of q cardboard tube with two
horizontal Sits in it, one exactly opposite
the other. This tube held before his eyes
and turned sharply with the fingers, formed
shutter or obturator on the same princi-
Pile as the shutter of Photographic camera,
closing the field of vision in about the for
tieth part Of second. By means of
this apparatus he watched the movements
of the horse and analysed them, and each
claimant nf tho Yo,nv i&uolf
upon his finely cultivated retina so sharply
that he was able to draw it Immediately
from memory. Thus, thanks to the extra
ordinary sensitiyeness of his eye. aided by
this little cardboard tube and patient
pencil, he discovered nearly the whole theo-
ry of the horses movements while he was
still boy. During his stay at Rome as
student in the Villa Medicis. he always
managed to have horse to ride, and con-
tinued his operations with his cardboard
shutter. However. none of the students
would believe what he said about the de-
until finally he made complete set OF the
oretical drawings, arranged them inside a
card board cylinder, set it spinning, and SO
gave counter-proof of his theory. All
these observations were again confirmed
when in 1879 Mr.. Mpybridee brought his
tied them in M. Meissonier's stu
dio to the masters great as
tonishment. But, as has frequently been
pointed out, these analytical photographs
are of little practical use as artistic docu-
ments, because in reality the eye does not
see the movements in their instantaneous
phases. In painting horses in movement
some compromise has to be made between
scientific accuracy and the error of popular
vision, which is satisfied with sporting
print where galloping horse is represented
without a single foot touching the ground.
Nnw n hOrca oYcort Srbon ho hoe Il 10 lave
tucked under him i'll the act of jumping,
always has at least one foot on the ground
with the leg as straight and stiff as pos
sible. The French have an expression for
galloping, '''ventre terre," meaning the
swiftest and most tearing pace as if the
belly of the horse came nearer to the ground
at this pace. The Gascons even talk about
galloping so quickly that they scrape
the ground with their spurs. This is alb
surd. In galloping, horse does not sink
more than an inch and half at the utmost,
owing to the bending and play of the pas
painted race horses running literally in &C
cordance with the popular phrase, "ventre
a terre." In M. Morot's pictures of cav
airy charges it will be found that he avoids
in the principal figures all intermediary ell
ements of movement: he selects rather the
mass of a cavalry charge sweeping past he
will paint one horse completely, and the
rest of the troop will be bits of horses, ele-
ments of movements, all the phases which
scientific analysis gives; and this agglomer-
alton of detail creates the illusion of a
SPECTATOR looking at such scene, can
never see more than one horse at time,
and a confused indication of the motion of
innumerable other horses.
M. Morot's researches and achievements
in the questions of rendering violent move
1l,,ek ,l,~A
ing just now about the increasing acuity of
the modern eye. 1t is indeed curious fact
that after Phidias and the friezes of the
Parthenon we find no really adequate artis-
tic representation of the horse in movement
until we reach our own days and the paint
ings OF M. Meissonier. The horses of Phid-
las, though small in size, are works of STYLE
and of practical truth, in which the princi-
pies of the animals structure are never neg
lected. Benozzo Gozzoli, Donatello. and
Verrocchlo have represented horses walking
whose movements are stiff and forced, but
still in conformity with the laws of animal
locomotion. These horses, however, like
those in the works of Leonardo, Durer,
Raphael and Michael Angelo, are obviously
not studied seriously and anatomicaIly
from nature. The painters of the seven
teenth century. Salvador Rosa, Lebrun, LIE |
Bourguignon, Wouvermans. Van der Men
len. treated the horse conventionally and |
without observation of nature. At the end |
of the eighteenth century earle Vernet and |
Gros began to observe the horse, but made
quately. Then came Gericault, who studied |
carefully from nature, but yet frequently |
gave his horses movements which are not |
exactly accord ng to the laws of locomotion |
Fromentin was hampered for want of theo-
retical instruction. and was never satisfied |
with his horses. The sculptor Barge always
had great difficulty in modelling horses,
and his equestrian groups are per
haps the least satisfactory of his |
works. In the days of Geri-
cault and Barye however, it must be re-
membered that the movements of the horse
had not been studied experimentaily and |
scientifically as they have been since. nota-
bly, by the Psychologist Marcy, by the horse
trainer Raabe, and by M. Meissonier. NJ. |
Morot, who. as We have seen. studied the |
morse experimentally before he thought of
painting the horse artistically, has carried |
the representation of movement to point |
where 1t seems likely to remain for come |
time to come, until the sensitiveness of the
modern eye makes another step IN its pro-
gresslve march. - From "Some Modern
french Palnters,' by Theodore Child, in
Harper Magazine for May.
An Agreeable Surprise.
Surprises may be pleasant or unpleasant,
depending entirely upon thenature of the
occasion and its results Tbara ara proho