Race, Gender, and Identity in American Equine Art 1832 to the Present

This book traces an evolution of equine and equestrian art in the United States over the last two centuries to counter conventional understandings of subjects that are deeply enmeshed in the traditions of elite English and European culture. In focusing on the construction of identity in painting and photography—of Blacks, women, and the animals themselves involvedinhorseracing, rodeo, and horse show competition—it illuminates the strategic and varying roles visual artists have played in producing cultural understandings of human-animal relationships. As the first book to offer a history of American equine and equestrian imagery, it shrinks the chasm of literature on the subject and illustrates the significance of the genre to the history of American art. This book further connects American equine and equestrian art to historical, theoretical, and philosophical analyses of animals and attests to how the horse endures as a vital, meaningful subject within the art world as well as culture at large. This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, American art, gender studies, race and ethnic studies, and animal studies.

Introduction: But the Horse is Much, Much More, 1. Interspecies Entanglements in Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits, 2. Bone, Speed, and Blood: Schreiber & Sons and the Photographic Equine Portrait, 3. A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well: The Rodeo Cowgirl in Early Twentieth-Century Real Photo Postcards, 4. Richard McLean’s Equine Acts, Epilogue

Jessica Dallow is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.