Sunset horses
- 📍 Location: Parc du Marquenterre, Baie de Somme, France
- 📅 Date: 2021
Two Henson horses at the end of the day in the Parc du Marquenterre, standing in reeds that reach their chests, heads close together. The frame is horizontal and I deliberately left a great deal of dry vegetation in front of them: the picture is about an animal seen through its habitat rather than above it.
The Henson is a recent breed, created here in the Baie de Somme in the second half of the twentieth century for riding in the marshes, and it looks exactly like what it is, a horse shaped by wet ground and wind. The dun coat, pale with a dark line along the spine, is almost the colour of the reeds, and at that hour the two become difficult to separate.
The light is low, warm and nearly horizontal. It passes through the reed heads instead of falling on them, which is why the foreground glows while the background stays dark, and it gives the picture a depth no frontal light could have produced.
What I felt there was the calm of animals with nothing to do. They were not grazing and not moving, simply standing together in the last warmth of the day. My intention was a portrait of a landscape and of the animal that landscape invented.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
