“We know what art is! It’s paintings of horses,” Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaghy says from his elegant top-floor office in 30 Rock.
George Stubbs’s masterpiece “Whistlejacket”; “Napoleon Crossing the Alps” on his rearing warhorse Marengo, by Jacques-Louis David; English hunt scenes. Horses are a quintessential subject in European, and especially English, art. They evoke palatial country estates passed down over the centuries and the breeches, boots and hunt colors of the men who ride for sport and leisure.
Yet the equestrian aesthetic is now synonymous with Ralph Lauren, who deconstructed the WASPish polo style into something modern and American, only to have his own discerning innovations copied to an endless, commercial degree. A small flash of the classic aesthetic can often be found cheapened and out of place.
A real equestrian aesthetic blends all aspects of the country, not just the blunt display of horse paintings
I’m certainly not knocking Ralph Lauren. Its Madison Avenue flagship, a converted Gilded Age mansion, is the pinnacle of retail design. Its dark wood paneling, hunter-green walls and dozens of oil on canvas equestrian scenes remain as timeless as ever. The Polo Bar, for all its gauche absurdities, is still exquisitely decorated. But when I, as a college student in dumpy off-campus housing, tried to class up the place with a thrifted replica of a hunt scene, I learned the hard way that inauthenticity doesn’t work.
What I’ve learned since decorating and maintaining my own country home is that inauthenticity is easily spotted. Even the most stately homes, in the wrong hands, cannot survive it. A designed space will feel like just that: the Ralph Lauren mansion, for all its beauty, is a prime example. Gutted by interior designers in the 1980s to give shoppers the experience of strolling through an aristocratic home, it can’t escape the sense that it is still, in fact, a store. And my little trip to the thrift shop art corner did nothing to transform the aging suburban home I spent senior year in.
Sophisticated designers can point to both methods as a way to build out an authentic equestrian aesthetic. The full overhaul brings historical accuracy and aesthetic immersion; the patchwork approach feels quaint and lived-in. Both are true, but wrong: even a tasteful poseur is still posing.
A real equestrian aesthetic blends all aspects of the country, not simply the blunt display of horse paintings. It encompasses the prerequisites of country living that cannot be separated from the keeping of horses – nods to the land, agriculture and infrastructure which are both practically necessary, and when combined, often beautiful. The naturally evolved aesthetic will be, in parts, rustic farmhouse, stately manor and working farm. While the equestrian aesthetic is collected, the process must be longitudinal. A massive haul from Chairish feels as inauthentic as a structural blowout. In one swoop, the whole house may be redecorated with novelties that produce a cohesive eccentricity. It appears superficially authentic and can certainly make for a desirable Airbnb.
But it lacks a compelling story as to why the home developed as it did. A true homeowner-collector will take pride in that story – the patchwork approach which, over generations, becomes historically immersive in its own right as it collects from the time and place in which it is rooted. Yuppie aesthetes, no matter how wealthy or tasteful, just cannot compete.
Art is more than “paintings of horses,” but horses do provide an ideal subject for the sense of awe that great art is meant to convey. Their inherent nobility reflects a sense of what good, natural, vigorous living should be, and their care, just like the land they inhabit, requires a continuous pursuit toward that end. The equestrian aesthetic, more than any one feature, represents that continuity. One great painting may evoke appreciation of it – but only a lifetime of immersion can breed full understanding.
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