Life and Death of the Race Horse

Life and Death of the Race Horse

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Six scenes of the life and death of a racehorse: 1. A foal lies beside its mother 2. The owner leads the horse across a race-course 3. A huntsman rides the horse over a wall with hounds running beside it 4. He is one of a pair of galloping horses in a post-chaise 5. As an emaciated pack-horse he plods along a rough track 6. A huntsman stands on his dead body, cutting off the flesh for the hounds

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Life and Death of the Race HorseLife and Death of the Race HorseLife and Death of the Race HorseLife and Death of the Race HorseLife and Death of the Race Horse

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.