by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on October 14, 2026
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
A horse standing, and a horse in motion
A saddled horse stands almost squarely on the page, turned towards the left. It raises its head slightly, the bridle and reins making fine dark lines around its face. One hind leg bends beneath the body while the other bears weight. At the left edge, a second drawing of two galloping front legs breaks into this settled pose. The sheet lets us look at one animal at rest and a separate fragment of movement without pretending they form a single scene.
The ALBERTINA in Vienna[1] catalogues the drawing as Gesatteltes Pferd, or Saddled Horse, by Peter Paul Rubens, about 1615–18. It records black and red chalk heightened with white chalk, on a sheet 41.3 × 42.8 centimetres, inventory 8252. The inherited page path, Etude of Horse, is less precise than the holding title. This is a drawing of a prepared mount with a secondary movement study, not a finished equestrian portrait or an oil painting.
The horse is impressive partly because it is so still. Its body fills much of the square sheet, yet the head, bent hind leg and loose lines of the mane make the pose alert rather than rigid. The ALBERTINA suggests that the flexed rear right leg gives an impression of readiness, as though the animal may soon move off. That is a reading of its stance, not a record of a documented ride. What we can see is the tension between weight on the ground and movement held in reserve.
At a Glance
- ArtistPeter Paul Rubens [1]
- DateAbout 1615–18 [1]
- MediumBlack and red chalk heightened with white chalk [1]
- Sheet dimensions41.3 × 42.8 cm [1]
- CollectionALBERTINA, Vienna, 8252 [1]
- Known painting useNo direct use identified [1]
Where this work sits in Rubens's career
The Elevation of the Cross
1609–10The Descent from the Cross
1611–14Saddled Horse
c. 1615–18The Garden of Love
1630–35The Three Graces
1630–35Contents
- How do the chalk colours work together?
- Why include the galloping legs?
- Was this Rubens's own horse?
- Did Rubens use it in a painting?
- How does it compare with the ALBERTINA ox?
- What do the marks at the edge mean?
- What makes this study worth a page of its own?
How do the chalk colours work together?
The museum's catalogue essay describes a sequence: Rubens first sketched the horse's outline in black chalk, probably from life, then used red chalk in the studio to warm the body towards the look of a brown coat. White chalk lifts selected passages. The exposed paper takes part in the modelling too. No single coloured line has to stand for an entire hide; black, red and light support combine to suggest its surface.
Look particularly at the neck and chest. Darker strokes establish the downward curve and the place where broad muscle turns towards the forelegs. Red lines move over and beside those contours, making the horse appear both solid and lightly alive. On the back, the saddle and cloth introduce different textures: harness edges are more deliberate, while the fabric falls in softer folds. The marks show close attention to the difference between an animal's body and equipment laid across it.
The ALBERTINA says the two chalks are applied in subtle gradations so that, with the pale paper shining through, the coat takes on the slight gloss of a freshly groomed horse. That description is an interpretation of the original sheet. The small reproduction here can show the general contrast between warm red and cool black marks, but it cannot replace a direct examination of every white heightening or the paper's tone. The catalogue's material identification is the authority for the caption.
This technique also resists the idea that a study must be rough or merely preliminary. Rubens could use an observational drawing to explore contour, colour and light together. The sheet remains open in places, especially around the hooves and outer edges, while the horse's head and chest receive enough attention to feel particular. Its varying finish directs the viewer's eye through the animal rather than treating every part equally.
Why include the galloping legs?
At the far left are front legs of a horse in gallop, bent and extended in a configuration different from the standing animal. The ALBERTINA points to this separate study in its catalogue text. It is not a complete second horse. Rubens has isolated a movement problem and placed it beside a much fuller study, using available paper to compare the calm stance with an action that might be needed in another composition.
The fragment makes the page more useful to a painter than a polished portrait of a single mount would be. To show a running horse convincingly, an artist needs to understand how the knees fold and how the forelegs project. A few lines can test that relationship without resolving the entire body. The left-hand legs are thus more than an incidental doodle, even though the museum does not connect them to a named finished painting.
The two studies also caution against reading the sheet as one moment in time. The standing horse is saddled; the galloping legs are a separate graphic investigation. Nothing in the image establishes that the same animal performed both poses during one sitting. Nor does the fragment prove Rubens immediately planned a hunt or cavalry scene. It shows what was being considered on this page, leaving the later use open.
Was this Rubens's own horse?
The ALBERTINA raises the possibility that the sheet records a favourite horse. Its essay notes the animal's almost portrait-like head and Rubens's reputation as an accomplished rider. This is a plausible personal reading, but the museum offers it as a suggestion, not an identified stable record. The drawing does not name a horse, owner, place or date of a particular ride. A caption should not turn the possibility into a fact.
The saddle makes the suggestion attractive. The animal is equipped for use rather than shown as an abstract specimen, and its direct presence can feel familiar. But saddles were also ordinary features for horses in hunts, journeys, histories and portraits. The drawing's careful attention may reflect the needs of art as much as personal affection. It can be intimate without being biographically certain.
There is a similar limit in the ALBERTINA's account of how such sheets were made. The essay describes Rubens drawing aspects of rural life during rides outside Antwerp, then refining observations in the workshop. It proposes that the black chalk outline here was made directly from nature. These are curatorial interpretations of practice. They help us understand why the study has both immediacy and considered chalk layering, but they do not provide an eyewitness report of this particular outing.
The safest language is therefore concrete and conditional. We can say the museum sees a live observation followed by studio work, and that it suggests the horse might have been a favourite. We cannot say when Rubens mounted it, where it stood, or what name it answered to. Leaving those unknowns intact keeps the drawing's actual evidence more vivid than a fabricated anecdote would.
Did Rubens use it in a painting?
The ALBERTINA says no known painting directly incorporates this drawing. That is striking because the sheet is so carefully made. A working study need not be tied to a surviving commission. It can build an artist's store of forms, sharpen an understanding of anatomy, or remain a valued image in its own right. The museum's statement prevents us from declaring it preparatory for a specific hunt merely because Rubens painted many horses elsewhere.
The catalogue places the sheet near a period when Rubens was increasingly concerned with hunt and historical scenes. It mentions the Decius Mus cycle of 1616–17 as context: horses have a substantial role in those designs. The Liechtenstein Princely Collections[3] identify that cycle as an eight-part sequence conceived by Rubens. That is useful evidence for the kind of pictorial problems his studio faced around the proposed date. It is not proof that this particular saddled horse appears in one of the panels.
The distinction between context and direct preparation matters. An artist can study the anatomy and bearing of a horse while making ambitious history pictures, yet the finished works may use other models or newly invented poses. The separate galloping-leg study hints at a broader interest in movement, but does not locate its destination. The public page can explain the visual logic of Rubens's studies without promising a painting the museum cannot identify.
Rubens's work for large compositions also involved collaborators, revisions and changes of format. The Liechtenstein catalogue names different roles across the Decius Mus cycle, including Rubens's design and workshop execution. That complex production context reinforces why a single drawing should not be assigned to a finished figure solely on chronology. The ALBERTINA drawing stands on its own as a study of one animal and one motion fragment.
How does it compare with the ALBERTINA ox?
The museum itself pairs this sheet with its Ox drawing[2], inventory 8253. That work is dated about 1618 and uses black and red chalk with brown and grey brushwork and traces of white heightening. Its sheet is 28.6 × 44 centimetres, different in shape and size from the horse. The ox's broad head meets the viewer more directly; the horse turns left under saddle and bridle.
Both drawings show Rubens taking a domestic animal seriously as a subject. The ALBERTINA's ox essay describes a black-chalk observation with later red-chalk work in the studio, a comparable proposed sequence. Yet their media are not identical: the ox record includes brushwork, whereas the horse record names two chalks and white heightening. Repeating the same generic label “animal study” would hide these differences in technique and pose.
The ox is linked by the museum to possible appearances of similar cattle in rural paintings. The horse, by contrast, is explicitly said not to enter a known painting directly. That difference is useful. It shows that the artistic value of such sheets does not depend on a one-to-one trace from paper to panel. They are related examples of attention to living bodies, with separate object numbers and separate afterlives.
What do the marks at the edge mean?
The ALBERTINA records a brown-pen “P P R” at the lower left and a collector's mark of Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen in the same area. The museum lists the duke in the sheet's provenance. These are part of the object's later history, but the public record for this horse does not establish that Rubens himself wrote the initials. A visible name-like mark should not be promoted automatically into an autograph signature.
This caution is especially relevant beside the ox drawing, where the ALBERTINA explicitly questions whether a comparable “P P R” inscription is by another hand. That does not prove both markings share a writer. It does show why the artist field and the inscription field must be read separately. The museum attributes the horse study to Rubens on the basis of its scholarship; a lower-edge notation does not carry the whole attribution.
The collector's mark also reminds us that the page we see has moved through collections. It cannot tell us which stable, street or countryside ride supplied the first observation. It tells us about a later owner and about the survival of a sheet now held in Vienna. Distinguishing marks made during drawing from later signs of collection is part of looking carefully at works on paper.
What makes this study worth a page of its own?
The sheet joins three modes of attention. The standing horse has the stillness of a portrait, the coloured chalk makes its coat a study of material and light, and the separate galloping legs test action. Those interests could serve Rubens in later pictorial work, but no specific finished destination is required to see their force here. The artwork is a finished historical object even if it was open-ended as a tool.
Its current title, date and dimensions keep that object distinct from other horses in Rubens's art. ALBERTINA 8252 is a near-square drawing from about 1615–18; the frame is larger than the sheet, and neither size belongs to a painting. The approved reproduction retains the original route for readers who know it as Etude of Horse, while the caption gives the museum's more precise title. The best way to begin is to follow the fine bridle lines around the head, then move through the weight-bearing legs to the quick, separate motion at the edge.
Rubens artworks directory
Frequently Asked Questions
The ALBERTINA calls it Gesatteltes Pferd, or Saddled Horse, inventory 8252.
No. It is a chalk drawing on paper, 41.3 × 42.8 centimetres. The larger figure in the museum record is the outer frame size.
The museum dates it about 1615–18. It does not give an exact day or year of a sitting.
No. The museum suggests it may have been a favourite horse, but no name or ownership document identifies the animal.
The ALBERTINA uses that cycle as period context and says the sheet was not directly used in a known painting.
A separate study of a horse's front legs in gallop appears beside the full standing animal.
In the ALBERTINA, Vienna. Its collection page[1] records inventory 8252.
Discussion
Compare the standing horse with the movement study at left.
Share a close observation or a reliable source about ALBERTINA 8252.
Reader Insights
How do black, red and white chalk shape the horse?
What can be said about a live model, and what remains a suggestion?
Why does a study matter without a known finished painting?
Join the Conversation
Add your reading below, distinguishing the horse from the ox study.
References
- ALBERTINA, Peter Paul Rubens, Gesatteltes Pferd , 8252. View source
- ALBERTINA, Peter Paul Rubens, Ochse , 8253. View source
- Liechtenstein Princely Collections, restoration of Rubens's Decius Mus cycle. View source
