Three Horses in a Stable

After his return from London and in the last years of his life, Gericault fully explored the use of wash and watercolor in numerous studies of horses and military subjects. This view of horses in a stable is typical of his late drawings. In each of the three tall arched stalls we see the hindquarters of horses. The first is a dappled bay with blankets and a full tail, the second dark, blanketed, and with a cropped tail, and the third white with a similar cropped tail and blanket. The horses' hooves are left unfinished as they stand in the hay. Bazin notes that the arched stalls of the stable appear the same as in the artist's 1822-24 painting "Black Horse Leaving the Stable" ("Cheval Noir Sortant d'Ecurie"), in the Musée Condé, Chantilly (Bazin no. 2437: PE 441). In the painting, a groom leads a dark horse out the stable door. In the background can be seen the hindquarters of three blanketed horses between the same high arcade openings, among an abundance of hay, feeding from a trough at the back of the stall. This connection suggests that the present watercolor was part of the artist's exploratory process as he worked on the painting.
This drawing was owned by the Polish romantic artist Piotr Michalowski, who fled Krakow for Paris in 1832 during the November Uprising against Russia. In Paris, he continued his studies with Nicolas-Toussaint Charlet and found his subject matter in depictions of horses which reveal Gericault's influence.