This is a remarkable drawing by “The man who loved to draw horses”.(1) It fills the sheet with an astonishing understanding of the movement of a horse, long before Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904), the pioneer of early motion photography, showed animals in motion. James Howe was born in Skirling, south of Edinburgh, the son of a minister. He began his working life apprenticed to a house painter, but his interest was in painting horses and cattle. He is said to have visited London only once, in order to paint horses in the Royal Mews. In 1815, he went to the field of Waterloo out of curiosity and in 1816, exhibited a painting of the Battle at the British Institute which was the only picture he ever exhibited in London, although he exhibited frequently in Edinburgh.

His most famous paintings are of horse fairs. The June Horse Fair at Skirling, 1829, is now in the National Gallery of Scotland. In the centre of the painting is a very similar horse being put through its paces, moving from right to left.

In 1824, W. H. Lizars of Edinburgh (1788-1859) engraved a set of fourteen horse pictures after Howe’s works and, in 1832, forty-five engravings of horses and cattle were published. The picture for which he is best known is Mr. Flemming of Barochan Castle, with John Anderson, one of the last of the old Scottish falconers and William Harvey, his artist and falconer, which was mezzotinted by Charles Turner. The original now hangs in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

1) A. D Cameron, The Man Who Loved to Draw Horses, Aberdeen University Press, 1986