
There is and overriding sense of forward propulsion see in the procession of fine horses on the south wall of the Axial Gallery deep in the caves of Lascaux.These horses are going somewhere, heading purposefully round the smooth curve of the wall. Their prehistoric artist, working to the flickering light of a fat-burning lamp, used the naturally occurring white shelf as the ground line , giving the horses a sense of spatial reality.The horses are precisely drawn and colored, each one being an individual in its characteristics. They appear to be of fairly elegant build, and could have been based on the Tarpan, one of the prehistoric breeds that is most closely related to the modern horse.
Images of hoses appear throughout the caves of Lascaux in various forms, and are the most frequently depicted animal there. The extent to which horses feature in prehistoric art suggests the importance they held for man, although the exact nature of their significance remains a mystery.
Tamsin Pickeral The Horse 30,000 years of the Horse in Art
I’d love to hear from you!