Horse Standing 1803

Adam von Bartsch created this etching of a standing horse sometime around the late 18th or early 19th century. Von Bartsch was not just an artist but also a pioneering art historian, working in Vienna at the center of the Habsburg Empire. He was the curator of the Imperial collection of prints and drawings, and his most enduring legacy is a comprehensive catalog of early printmaking. So this image offers an interesting insight into how the institutions of art history and artistic creation were intertwined in this period. Horses, of course, also had a central place in the social structure of the time, particularly in aristocratic culture. The historian's role is to piece together these different contexts. We look at archival sources, like letters and inventories, to understand the lives of artists, and the cultural forces that shaped their work. Art is not created in a vacuum; it's always contingent on its social and institutional context.