Curatorial description (6 January 2016)
In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, photographers and scientists became interested in arresting action on film. Their studies revealed movement beyond what the human eye could see. One of the most skilled innovators in the field was Ottomar Anschütz, whose detailed photographs of animal locomotion caught the attention of the German government. Commissioned by the War Ministry, Anschütz recorded horses and their riders at the elite Military Institute in Hannover. This photograph of a soldier reining in his steed, its untamed mane frozen in midair, was previously in the collection of the Catalan muralist Josep Maria Sert. The grid that Sert added to the photograph indicates he may have used it as a reference for his artwork.
