A Team of Percheron Horses thumbnail 1
Image of Gallery in South Kensington
On display at V&A South Kensington
Paintings, Room 81, The Edwin and Susan Davies Galleries

A Team of Percheron Horses

Oil Painting
1870 (painted)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

Guillaume Regamey (1837-1875) was born in Paris where he became the pupil of Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran (1802-1897) together with his two brothers Félix (1844-1907) and Frédéric (1849-1925). He participated to the first 'Salon des Refusés', which took place in François Bonvin's (1817-1887) atelier in 1859, where he befriended Corot. He had a short career and died at the early age of 37. A retrospective exhibition of his oeuvre took place at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1876.

This is a fine example of Guillaume Régamey's art he devoted almost entirely to the depiction of horses and horsemen. This painting shows three Percheron horses climbing up a hillock under a bright sky while a man behind them is emptying a mud cart. This representation of labouring horses provided the artist with the possibility of depicting horses' anatomy from different point of view. The bright light and the earthen palette are typical of the Naturalist movement.


Object details

Categories
Object type
TitleA Team of Percheron Horses (generic title)
Materials and techniques
oil on canvas
Brief description
Oil painting, 'A Team of Percheron Horses', Guillaume Régamey, 1870
Physical description
Three horses harnessed to a cart, standing on a ridge of earth. On the spectator's right in the foreground near the cart, which has just been tipped up, stands a labourer holding a pickaxe, with his back to the spectator. Cloudy sky.
Dimensions
  • Estimate height: 63.8cm
  • Estimate width: 105.4cm
  • With frame weight: 19.5kg
  • Frame height: 88.5cm
  • Frame width: 128.5cm
  • Frame height: 88cm
  • Frame width: 130cm
Dimensions taken from C.M. Kauffmann,Catalogue of Foreign Paintings, II. 1800-1900, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1973
Style
Marks and inscriptions
  • 'Regamey Guillaume. 70' (Signed and dated by the artist, lower left)
  • No1 Attelage de chevaux Percherons/ Regamey Guillaume/ 41 Addison Gardens 2North Kensington (Inscribed by hand on label on the back)
Credit line
Bequeathed by Constantine Alexander Ionides
Object history
Commissioned by Constantine Alexander Ionides to the artist; Ionides paid £120 for the work which entered his collection before March 1873 (see letter from Dalou to C. A. I, 11/03/1873, NAL 86.NN.Box II). Bequeathed by Constantine Alexander Ionides, 1900.

Historical significance: This painting is a fine example of Régamey's art and shows a mud cart driven by three Percheron horses. They are climbing up to the summit of a hillock, moving away from the spectator. This compositional formula is characteristic of Regamey who often employed figures seen from the back receding into the distance such as in CAI.73.
Percheron horses originate in the area known as "Le Perche" in the north west of France and are imposing animals used to carry massive loads. They are particularly adapted to the farm labours and may have provided interesting features for the artist who devoted almost entirely his oeuvre to the depiction of horses. Many sketches of horses in all sorts of position are currently housed in the Louvre, Paris.
There is a preparatory drawing in the Louvre, Paris (RF 22601), signed and dated 1860, 10 years before the execution of the finished version, which suggests that Régamey used to rework his compositions over the years.
This painting was possibly commissioned by Constantine Alexander Ionides, whom Régamey had probably met through the intermediary of Legros during the winter 1870-71 in London. At that time, Régamey was sharing Legros' studio in London and collaborating to the Illustrated London News.
Historical context
19th-century French art is marked by a succession of movements based on a more or less close relationship with nature. At the beginning of the century, Romantic artists were fascinated by nature they interpreted as a mirror of the mind. They investigated human nature and personality, the folk culture, the national and ethnic origins, the medieval era, the exotic, the remote, the mysterious and the occult. This movement was heralded in France by such painter as Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863). In its opposition to academic art and its demand for a modern style Realism continued the aims of the Romantics. They assumed that reality could be perceived without distortion or idealization, and sought after a mean to combine the perception of the individual with objectivity. This reaction in French painting against the Grand Manner is well represented by Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) who wrote a 'Manifesto of Realism', entitled Le Réalisme published in Paris in 1855. These ideas were challenged by the group of the Barbizon painters, who formed a recognizable school from the early 1830s to the 1870s and developed a free, broad and rough technique. They were mainly concerned by landscape painting and the rendering of light. The works of Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Peña (1807-1876), Jules Dupré (1811-1889), Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867), Constant Troyon (1810-1865) and Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) anticipate somehow the plein-air landscapes of the Impressionists.
Subjects depicted
Summary
Guillaume Regamey (1837-1875) was born in Paris where he became the pupil of Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran (1802-1897) together with his two brothers Félix (1844-1907) and Frédéric (1849-1925). He participated to the first 'Salon des Refusés', which took place in François Bonvin's (1817-1887) atelier in 1859, where he befriended Corot. He had a short career and died at the early age of 37. A retrospective exhibition of his oeuvre took place at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1876.

This is a fine example of Guillaume Régamey's art he devoted almost entirely to the depiction of horses and horsemen. This painting shows three Percheron horses climbing up a hillock under a bright sky while a man behind them is emptying a mud cart. This representation of labouring horses provided the artist with the possibility of depicting horses' anatomy from different point of view. The bright light and the earthen palette are typical of the Naturalist movement.
Bibliographic references
  • Kauffmann, C.M. Catalogue of Foreign Paintings, II. 1800-1900 , London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1973, pp. 84-85, cat. no. 183.
  • Monkhouse, C., Magazine of Arts, 1884, p. 120, repr. p. 126.
  • Anonymous, 'The Constantine A. Ionides Collection' in Art Journal, 1904, p. 268 f., repr.
  • F. Rutter, 'La peinture française à South Kensington' in L'Art et les Artistes, v, 1907, pp. 11, 13, repr.
  • B.S. Long, Catalogue of the Constantine Alexander Ionides collection. Vol. 1, Paintings in oil, tempera and water-colour, together with certain of the drawings, London, 1925, p. 50.
Collection
Accession number
CAI.71

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Record createdJune 11, 2003
Record URL
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