Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1981.25.655
Gallery Label:
At the height of his long career James Ward was known as the “Mammoth of animal painters,” although he is remembered as a major force in the British Romantic tradition for his subject pictures and landscapes as well. In 1807 Ward began to paint pictures of thoroughbred horses, animals who had been carefully bred to achieve maximum speed on the racecourse. Eagle is one the finest of these portraits of thoroughbreds, and it exhibits Ward’s remarkable ability to create an accurate physical portrayal of a particular animal. At the same time he evokes a transcendent Romantic type—suggesting the latent power of the a barely tamed creature, full of drive, dash, and tension, whose swollen veins and flared nostrils to some extent conjure up the elemental forces of nature itself.\n\n Gallery label for An American's Passion for British Art - Paul Mellon's Legacy (Yale Center for British Art, 2007-04-18 - 2007-07-29)