The Horse Modoc

Artist Unknown Artist

Periodca. 1870 - 1890

MediumOil on artist's board

Dimensions12 × 18 in. (30.5 × 45.7 cm)

InscribedInscribed lower left, "Modoc" with each letter a different color of paint.

MarkingsBears a French trademark sticker on the reverse that reads, "1770 / Trademark / Pour Parvenir a Bonne Foi."

ClassificationsLandscapes & Still Life

Credit LineMuseum Purchase, 1945

Object number2083A.2

DescriptionView of a black horse trotting from right to left, with a bridle and reins but no saddle or harness. It is depicted on a dirt track or path in a grassy landscape setting with fences, a roadway and trees on the left, and a large tree with a pond beyond it on the right. There are waterfoul on the pond, as well as a human figure in a rowboat.
NotesThere were at least three standardbred or trotting horses named Modoc in the last four decades of the nineteenth century. Listed in Wallace's American Trotting Register for 1879, they were from Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York. Horses called Modoc were named after a small group of Native Americans in Oklahoma whose ancestral home was near today's California-Oregon border.

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