Before the late 1800’s artists drawing or painting a galloping horse usually showed them with both front and hind legs stretched out and off the ground.
George Stubbs, usually showed his horse subjects standing. This may have been because he liked close attention to detail and took great pains to show the horse’s anatomy correctly. He may have realized that the galloping horse was not suspended with all four limbs stretched out but also knew he did not fully understand the sequence of the footfall of a galloping horse. In this painting he shows the horse pushing off the ground with its back legs not in unison.
In 1887 the mystery of the galloping horse was solved. Photographer Eadweard Muybridge had developed techniques to capture motion in individual frames. He also designed the Zoopraxiscope machine to illustrate his photos in a moving sequence. His book of photographs, The Horse in Motion, published in 1878 changed forever how the galloping horse would be portrayed.
The photos in this post are photos of the illustrations in Tamsin Pickeral’s book The Horse, 30,000 Years of the Horse in Art.
HorseAddict 
As Springsteen would say: “born to run.”
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Yes,! Love Springsteen 🙂
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Reading this blog is always a pleasure, I am doing this for my satisfaction ma’am. I have to thank you for sharing these informations.
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Thank you. It makes me happy to know you enjoy the posts
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These photos are fascinating.
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As it turns out, research has shown that a few horses, as far back as the famous Thoroughbred sire Lexington in the mid 1800’s, had a double suspension gallop. Secretariat and Justify also. A researcher I trust, Deb Bennett Phd, has written about it here: https://www.pressreader.com/usa/equus/20180301/281582356081421
You’ll have to scroll (scroll sideways, it seems) to the end of the article to find the reference. You can get more picture evidence here: https://ponybootcamp.wordpress.com/2014/08/19/lets-talk-about-secretariat/
The point being, in the second suspension the horse’s front and hind legs are stretched out similar to the old paintings before Muybridge! Who knew??
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Well as you know Alli there’s that moment of suspension in the canter that stops it from becoming the dreaded 4 beat canter. The legs are not extended for it but it is airborne. Thanks so much for these links I shall look at them with interest!
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It’s interesting… artists might like horses but not really being a rider , he might skip the technicalities.
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Yes and as long as it looked like the horse was going fast that was all that mattered. Thanka for commenting 🙂
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It wasn’t until I took Anthropology 101 my freshman year in college (long ago) that I learned about the stereotypically represented galloping horse posture depicted in many drawings/paintings/illustrations as being false. The prof made a point of this along with his rants on the despicability of dingos! Ever since, I watched real galloping horses with an eye to see for myself and rate the knowledge of artists on the subject of horse posture. Meanwhile, all along, my artist Ma had always told me that the image of the galloping horse with no hooves touching the ground was bogus…except of course whenever they jumped over anything.
😉
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Haha! I’m laughing at the despicability of dingos! When we travelled in Australia when our kids were young we did get the odd comment about our two year daughter being “dingo food”. Thanks for your comment.
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