Bibliothèque mondiale du cheval

«  […] Riding experts, in my experience, have in common with art historians the tendency to think that they are absolutely right on any point concerning their particular subject, even though both disciplines are far from being "hard sciences", require aesthetic discrimination, and involve what might be called trial and error land sometimes punishment and reward) methodologies. Thus dressage instructors, trainers, breeders, and even authors of books on the horse in art (or the horse in history, as seen in art) will, like patrons and peasants of past times, pronounce this or that painting of a horse to be "wrong", or at least indicative of poor breeding in the horse, the rider, or the artist, Here enthusiasts of equitation might benefit from consultation with an art historian, even one unable to discuss riding forms, since he or she can explain that art, too, depends upon stylistic conventions as well as nature : what might seem to the horseman an absurdity in a picture or statue could well be the continuation of a venerable tradition or a deliberate departure on the part of the artist (who himself may have been a good horseman) from every day experience.
It follows from these remarks that no riding master, and no art historian, will have the last word on the subject and that this book will draw a lot of criticism. My "Apology" as prefatory remarks once were called, is that the text is not intended as a definitive survey but rather as a "study", the record of a student’s reading and looking at the relevant material I have concentrated upon a few questions that seemed inadequately treated in the literature such as the relationship between Rubens and Velázquez in respect to this genre and the levels of meaning that were on scerned in royal equestrian portraiture. More broadly the text attempts to sketch out the main lines of development, from the Renaissance onward, of the formal types to which equestrian portraits and monuments conformed.[…]. » Présentation de l’éditeur (1989)