It seems that Chinese New
Year comes around more quickly each year. This Friday, January 31st will
mark the start of Horse Year. Thinking about horses in Chinese culture, images
of the Terracotta Army Horses at Xi’an and of the famous Tang dynasty pottery
horses immediately spring to mind.
With associations going back
to antiquity, horses are firmly entrenched in Chinese art. Looking though my
objects for images of horses, I notice two main types: horses mounted by people
or gods, and those in more natural settings.
 |
| Click on any image to enlarge. |
For all its apparent
simplicity, this small wooden statue is a well-planned composition. The black
horse, red face, and metallic garments all contrast nicely with each other.
There is a constant sense of balance—the horse’s head with the rider’s ‘apron’,
the fall of the tail with the fall of the ‘skirt’, and the rider’s bent arm
with the horse’s bent leg. Even the gilt scrollwork on the front of the base
ties it in with the statue and also echoes the rider’s headdress.
As opposed to the martial air
of the first mounted example, this friendlier rider is holding up a toy and
playing a game of catch. The above detail comes from a very colorful set of
carved furniture panels.
At first I thought this
finial represented a horse, based on the head and overall shape, but on closer
inspection, the legs (with paws!) and under-carriage look more like those of a
lion. Perhaps this is some sort of horse-lion chimera, or perhaps an idiosyncrasy
of the carver—I’ll have to be on the lookout for similar examples.
The creature in this finial
is definitely all horse. The way it is mounted on an iron pole reminds me of a
carousel animal, especially the way it is posed prancing.
Horses are associated with
warfare, and this detail from an intricately-carved battle scene shows the
horse at full gallop while its rider brandishes spears and weapons.
This battle scene, from a
painted furniture panel, features the female warrior Deng Chanyu on horseback.
Here is a scene from the end
of a wooden offering box, showing a horse that is saddled but without any
rider. This makes a good transition to the second type of horse in Chinese art,
those depicted as plain animals in more natural settings.
This carved pierced panel
with its gilded, grazing horse has great appeal. The curlicue fretwork is very
well done, and the red-gold-black color scheme is used to great effect,
although very different from the mounted horse statue above.
The scene carved in shallow
relief on this inkstone has a charming folk-art quality. The horse is once
again in a grazing posture, and the monkey in the tree seems about to jump on
his back, and looks very pleased with his plan.
Finally, here is the top of a
small medicine container, embossed with a horse. The still-sealed tin contains
Triangle Brand ‘genuine horse bezoar’, a kind of stone formed in the horse’s
digestive tract, and which is used in traditional medicine.
These few examples barely
scratch the surface of horse imagery. If you have a favorite among those depicted,
let me know in the comments. Horses in Chinese culture, similar to those in the
West, can symbolize battle-readiness, importance, power and speed, as well as
nature and freedom. Embodying all these qualities, this Horse Year is bound to be an
auspicious one.
Happy Year of the Horse!
(All photographs and original articles property of the
author.)
