A Horse Hitched to a Post

A glossy chestnut horse stands tethered to a tall post on a patch of tan ground, ears pricked and one hind leg slightly raised, its rich red-brown coat picked out with white highlights against a sky of blue bands — painted in thick, visible strokes that already show the young Delacroix’s restless energy. Eugène Delacroix, who would become the leader of French Romantic painting, made this small study about 1820, early in his career, and his lifelong fascination with horses runs through the picture from the Baroque masters and Géricault whose animal subjects he absorbed. The canvas appeared in the artist’s posthumous sale of 1864, passed through the Haro family and the Dubourg collection, and was given to the National Gallery of Art in 1994 by Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon. The painting is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.