Our intention is not, in connection with the subject which now occupies us, to enter into a deep discussion on the various opinions which have been set forth. We desire, above all, to give some indications which, from the practical point of view, can be utilized in the representation of the horse, and at the beginning to demonstrate the advantages of these indications. Now, there is a fact which we have had occasion to note; it is the following: almost invariably, when a person who is little accustomed to represent the horse, or not previously informed of certain proportions of lengths, begins to draw from nature, the error generally committed is that of making the head too small and the body too long. Is it a preconceived idea which is the cause that one regards them in this manner? Perhaps. At all events, certain artists who have made the representation of horses their special study have even had this habit. It is therefore necessary to be informed of the proportions; this is the object of the study which we are now undertaking.
Bourgelat,[37] in the eighteenth century, fixed for the first time and in complete fashion the proportions of the horse; it is he, consequently, who created the æsthetics of the horse. It is but justice to recall the fact. His system has a point of analogy with that which is employed to determine the human proportions. Indeed, Bourgelat chose the length of the head as a standard of measurement, and the subdivisions of the head for measures of less extent. ‘Since beauty,’ said he,[38] ‘resides in the congruity and proportion of the parts, it is absolutely necessary to observe the dimensions, individual and relative, and in order to acquire a knowledge of the proportions, to assume a kind of measure which can be indiscriminately common for all horses. The part which can serve as a standard of proportion for all the others is the head. Take a measurement between two parallel lines—one tangent to the nape of the neck or the summit of the forelock, the other tangent to the extremity of the anterior lip—a line perpendicular to these two tangents will give you its geometrical length. Divide this length into three portions, and give to these three parts a special name, which may be applied indefinitely to all heads—as, for example, that of prime. Any head whatsoever will, accordingly, in its geometrical length, always have three primes; but all the parts which you will have to consider, whether in their length, in their height, or in their width, cannot constantly have either one prime, or a prime and a half, or three primes; subdivide, then, each prime into three equal parts, which you will name seconds, and as this subdivision will not suffice to give you a just measure of all the parts, subdivide anew each second into twenty-four points, so that a head divided into three primes will have, by the second division, nine seconds, and two hundred and sixteen points by the last.’
[37] Claude Bourgelat, founder of the veterinary schools in France. He was born at Lyons in 1712, and died at Paris in 1779.
[38] Bourgelat, ‘Éléments de l’art vétérinaire. Traité de la conformation extérieure du cheval,’ Paris, edition of 1785, p. 133.
But where this system appears to us to have lost somewhat of its unity is when the author transforms it, in pointing out the following mode of procedure: ‘But the head itself may err by default of proportion. This part is not, indeed, considered as either too short or too long, too thin or too thick, but by comparison with the body of the animal. Now, the body, being required to have—whether in length, reckoning from the point of the arm to the prominence of the buttock, or in height, reckoning from the summit of the withers to the ground—two heads and a half; whenever the head, by its geometrical length, shall give, in length or in height, to the body measured more than two and a half times its own length, it will be too short; and if it gives less, it will be too long.
‘In the case in which one of these faults exists there would be no further question of establishing by its geometrical length the proportions of the other parts. Give up this common measure, and measure the height or the length of the body; divide the length or the height into five equal portions; take, then, two of these divisions, divide them into primes, seconds, and points, corresponding to the divisions and subdivisions which you would have made of the head, and you will have a common measure, such as the head would have given you if it had been proportionate.’[39]
[39] Bourgelat, loc. cit., p. 135.
We understand, up to a certain point, that Bourgelat may have been able to give this advice which, generally speaking, is sufficiently practical, since, in certain cases, he was able to pronounce that such a head was too small or too large. But it is always mischievous, with regard to the effect produced on the reader, to propose to him, in the application of a rule, to suppress the foundation on which this rule is established. Besides, even if all the measurements compared with the two-fifths of the length of the body are proportionate with regard to one another, the animal, in spite of this, since the head must be taken into consideration, will, in a strict sense, be none the less disproportioned.
