Carle Vernet

Commissioned by Jean Georges Schickler to the artist;

Collection Marguerite de Schickler, Countess Hubert de Pourtalès;

Former collection Béatrix de Pourtalès, Countess Roger de Renusson d'Hauteville. 

Milton, a magnificent nine year old bay horse with a red-tinted coat, stands in a wide landscape framed by trees on either side. Beside him, his owner, the elegant Baron Schickler, is talking to a stable lad. Vernet distributes the tones of reddish-brown, green and yellow that give rhythm to the composition in masterly fashion, with a fine, steady and perfectly controlled paintbrush. This classical and well-balanced work combines the qualities characteristic of Carle Vernet: beauty, elegance and finesse. The perfection of this portrait of Milton was entirely in tune with the painting’s demanding patron, the great horse lover Jean-Georges Schickler (1793–1843). He was a banker and collector, running the family bank Schickler Frères while amassing a very large collection of artworks, which from 1828 he kept in the Hôtel Crozat, Place Vendôme, a recent purchase.

Passionate about horses since childhood and a skilled horseman, Carle Vernet devoted a large part of his oeuvre to them, depicting them in oil or in engravings. He was one of the first to visit manèges, stud farms and circuses so as to observe the thoroughbred horses that most interested him. He tirelessly studied their graceful anatomy, their supple musculature and their noble silhouettes. His oeuvre incorporates a wide variety of equestrian subjects: portraits of horses, riding and hunting scenes, horse races, Orientalist and military subjects as well as vast Napoleonic battles.