Arab Horses Fighting in a Stable by Eugene Delacroix

Gericault had inspired in Delacroix his fascination with horses, the emblematic beasts of Romantic painting. But his love of horses was fully satisfied only in Morocco. Thereafter the Arab horses that he had seen and drawn during his voyage constituted a kind of repertoire.

For one of his last paintings, Arab Horses Fighting in a Stable, he drew on a scene that he had witnessed in Tangier, when the horses of Mornay and the English Consul were fighting. No anatomical studies lie behind this painting. Once again, it is the violence of the combat that he portrays; the power and energy of the animals, an effect emphasised by the strong contrasts of light and shade.