Harnessed horse 

Heinrich Bürkel made this watercolor of a harnessed horse sometime in the first half of the 19th century. Bürkel was a genre painter, and the study of working animals would have been essential to his art. The image creates meaning through visual codes, cultural references, and historical associations. Bürkel worked in Germany, where the ideals of Romanticism were dominant. But rather than representing the sublime power of nature, here we see the everyday existence of an animal whose life is dedicated to serving human needs. The harnessing of the horse suggests the development of industrialization and agriculture in the 19th century. We might study travel journals, agricultural records, and the diaries of the laboring class, in order to better understand the society that shaped Bürkel's vision, and the vision he offered in turn. Ultimately, it is through understanding the social and institutional context that the meaning of art is revealed.