In this article
Which Horse Fair is this?
The Met’s painting is accession 87.25, given by Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1887. [1] Keep that number with the title when looking at prints or museum records.
London’s National Gallery has another Horse Fair, NG621, dated 1855. Its account explains that the smaller version was made to help produce prints while the larger painting toured. [3] The Gallery’s September 2021 article describes underpainting by Bonheur’s partner Nathalie Micas for that London version. [4]
Two collection records let you check which object you have found. The Met’s date range includes work after its first exhibition. [1] London’s record gives the single date 1855. [3] Start with the collection number before transferring a description, measurement or conservation story between them.
How do the horses create movement?
The central detail brings hands and horses close together. Find a rein, then trace it towards the hand that holds it. Change direction and follow the nearest horse’s neck, back and legs. These lines make different routes through the same small area.
Katy Hessel discusses Bonheur’s handling of light, shade, energy and movement in The Horse Fair. She says Bonheur places the viewer amid the action, comparing the effect with watching a theatrical performance from near the stage. [2] Try that reading against the whole image: where do the animals seem to approach you, and where do their bodies turn away?
The foremost pale horse is bright against darker animals behind it. Its body stretches across several figures, interrupting your view of their work. Return to the whole painting and compare that interruption with the spaces under the horses. Each gap gives another glimpse of ground, legs or a person passing behind.
Outlined area: this detail’s location on the whole framed reproduction.
A market organised for looking
The Met locates the subject at the Paris horse market on the Boulevard de l’Hôpital. Its gallery audio describes handlers leading horses in a circle while prospective buyers watched from the grassy bank on the right. [1] That account gives a purpose to the movement: the horses are being shown to people considering them.
In the right-hand detail, look beyond the foreground horses for the much smaller people among the trees. Then return to the complete scene and compare their distance from the animals with your own imagined position. The painting lets you watch a demonstration while placing large moving bodies close to its front edge.
Follow the line of trees towards the left background. The Met identifies the distant building there as the Salpêtrière. [1] The market occupies a particular part of Paris, even as the foreground horses command most of your attention.
Outlined area: this detail’s location on the whole framed reproduction.
Why did Bonheur wear trousers?
The Met says Bonheur visited the market to sketch twice a week for a year and a half, wearing men’s clothing to discourage attention. [1] The National Gallery’s account discusses police permission to wear those clothes and relates Bonheur’s explanation that they protected her from unwelcome comments. [3] Hessel also treats the permit and Bonheur’s preference for trousers as part of the working conditions behind the painting. [2]
Repeated observation required access to the market. Read the clothing accounts alongside the details of animal bodies, reins and handlers: they describe how an artist could spend time looking at a demanding subject. They also sit alongside public recognition. The Met records praise for the painting at the Paris Salon of 1853. [1]
Hessel describes Bonheur’s wider study of animals, including anatomical work and visits to slaughterhouses. [2]
Animals on the scale of a frieze
The Met connects Bonheur’s final composition with ancient Greek sculpture as well as earlier painters of horses. It reports that Bonheur called this work her own “Parthenon frieze”. [1]
Use that comparison as a looking prompt. Follow the horses across the broad canvas instead of choosing one as the subject. Notice the succession of backs, necks and legs, and the repeated changes between light and dark coats. Then look upwards: the trees and sky give that procession a different setting from a carved architectural band.
The comparison helps you think about how several figures become one extended composition.
Compare a sheet and the Met painting
The Met holds a separate sheet called Study for “The Horse Fair”, accession 1975.319.2. It records black chalk, brush and grey wash, heightened with white, and dates the sheet only to the nineteenth century. [5]
Compare the white marks on the central pale horse in the drawing with the light on the large grey horse in the painting. In the sheet, patches of white lie beside grey marks and exposed tan paper. In the painting, look at the dappled patches across the large grey horse’s side. Compare how each image separates a bright patch from its surroundings. Follow a contour in each image, then look for a place where one animal overlaps another.
Next find the rearing horses. A prominent dark rearing horse sits right of centre in the drawing, while a dark rearing horse occupies the area left of centre in the painting. In the painting, find the pale rearing horse beside the dark one, then follow the bodies that cross below them. Treat these as visible differences between the two objects.
The drawing leaves much of its upper area open. Return to the painting and look at how the trees, distant building and clouds occupy that space.
Two separately identified objects
Whole reproductions fit inside equal-height display boxes, not relative physical size. Their aspect ratios differ. The painting photograph includes its frame. Grey areas around the reproductions are display backgrounds, not parts of the artworks.
Study for “The Horse Fair”
The Horse Fair
Two dates, one long working process
The Met dates the painting 1852 to 1855. Its audio account explains that Bonheur retouched the canvas in 1855 after it had appeared at the Salon in 1853. [1] The range is useful when a reproduction gives only the exhibition year.
The Met’s gallery audio describes a date altered during the 1855 retouching. [1] Use the native museum image to look for marks at the lower-right edge, keeping the written museum chronology alongside what you can actually read in the photograph.
For the related London object, open the National Gallery’s NG621 record. Its smaller version has a history of print production and restoration. [3] Read that history as the account of a separate canvas.
Common questions
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Where is the large Horse Fair?
The large painting discussed here is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, accession 87.25. [1] Check the museum’s current record before planning a visit.
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How big is the Met painting?
The museum records 244.5 cm in height and 506.7 cm in width. [1] The gilded frame visible in the photograph is additional to those painting dimensions.
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Why does the date run from 1852 to 1855?
The Met records a period of work that includes retouching in 1855 after the painting’s exhibition at the 1853 Paris Salon. [1]