Equine art

Taking inspiration from our recent exhibition, 'Stubbs: Portrait of a Horse', this Salon conversation delves deeper into equine art. On the discussion panel is Chiedza Mhondoro, a curator, art historian and author of Horses in Art; Thomas Balfe, an art historian whose main research areas are 17th-century animal, hunting, fable and food still-life imagery; and Dr Fay Penrose, Senior Lecturer in Veterinary Anatomy at the University of Liverpool. Together they will explore the form and function of equine art, its impact on science, society and art itself.

Chiedza Mhondoro is a curator and art historian specialising in eighteenth-century British art and its wider social, cultural, political, economic, and international contexts. She is currently Assistant Curator at Tate Britain, where she curated Stubbs and Wallinger: The Horse in Art; co-curated Sunset Provision: Yuri Pattinson and J. M. W. Turner; and contributed to the curation of Sargent and Fashion and of the eighteenth-century galleries in the 2023 collection rehang. Before joining Tate Britain, Chiedza worked in curatorial roles at Somerset House and the Southbank Centre, alongside positions in arts education and public programming at a range of institutions including the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and Camden Arts Centre. Her academic background includes degrees from Durham University and the Courtauld Institute of Art. Chiedza has published widely, contributing essays to numerous exhibition catalogues and books, and is the author of Horses in Art.

Thomas Balfe is an art historian specialising in early modern (c.1550–c.1750) northern European easel painting and the graphic arts. His main research areas are seventeenth-century animal, hunting, fable, and food still-life imagery. His co-edited book on the term ad vivum and its relation to images made from or after the life was published in 2019. He is currently working on a long-term writing project that focuses on European depictions of hunting practices in the Americas, Asia and the Arctic.

Dr Fay Penrose is head of Normal Structure and Function (NSF) at the School of Veterinary Science at the University of Liverpool. Specialising in teaching functional and applied veterinary anatomy to undergraduate veterinary students, Dr. Penrose leads on teaching of the anatomy of the head and thorax based on her research that focuses on form and function of different head shapes. With a strong personal interest in art, previously a student of Art & Sculpture, Dr. Penrose believes in learning through drawing and facilitates regular anatomical drawing sessions for students.