The Large Blue Horses

1911

Oil on canvas, 105.7 × 181.1 cm. Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Pressed together across nearly the full width of the canvas, the horses stand before red and yellow hills. The group reads almost as one large body rather than three separate animals.

Look at the pale tree trunks: they slice down through the horses and flatten the space.
Long green leaves rise along the bottom edge, rooting the animals in the plants around them.
The bodies are shaded with deeper blue and violet instead of brown or gray.
The arched backs and bent necks repeat the curves of the hills behind them, so that animals and land seem to move to a single rhythm.
The Walker acquired it in 1942 with money from the T. B. Walker Foundation's Gilbert M. Walker Fund.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · PD-Art