Hoofd van een paard met oogkleppen, naar rechts 1775 - 1833

Jean Bernard made this sanguine drawing of a horse’s head with blinkers sometime in the late 18th or early 19th century in the Netherlands. The horse, an animal of labor, is here subjected to human will by way of the blinkers that force it to look only forward. The Netherlands was at this time a society structured around trade and agriculture, both industries reliant on animal labor. It is perhaps no coincidence that the institutions of art began to coalesce, with drawing academies becoming more common. Bernard himself worked as an instructor. So the image may reflect a general attempt by such institutions to train artists in the faithful representation of nature but might also reveal social attitudes toward animals as beasts of burden. To learn more about the relationship between the history of art and social history, one might consult periodicals from the time, records from art academies, or other scholarly articles. In doing so, we recognize that the meaning of art is always contingent on its social and institutional context.