Featuring the Work of Béatrice Bulteau

Image above is a vase from Beatrice Bulteau. Her wish is for teachers to teach their students about beauty and to appreciate one of the most beautiful animals, the horse. As you can see, this vase is adorned with horses.  Think about how you can use the work of Beatrice Bulteau with your students - or any of the artists - works of art listed below. This can be a meaningful interdisciplinary lesson for your students.  To begin any unit, you might want to try Maggie White's Horse Awareness Test.

HORSE ART LINKS     INTERDISCIPLINARY     HORSE LESSON PLANS

Béatrice Bulteau is fascinated with horses. See her book Magic Horses. Béatrice Bulteau - Born in France, now living in Portugal. Horses in watercolor, prints, ceramics and more.

Tip: Try a watercolor lesson using the experimental techniques shared by Linda Fields  
and Sue Galos.  If anyone does a lesson on watercolor horses, please send me images for a lesson page.

Art of the Horse WebQuest: Horsing Around Craig Roland created this web quest. Note: some of the links to images are now broken. Craig created this web quest several years ago - Do a search for another image online of the work of art listed. More  Resources on the Teachers' page:

Degas Teaching Program National Gallery: Paintings and sculpture. Many Degas images of horses can be found on line.

Deborah Butterfield Horses at Greg Kucera Gallery  More on Deborah Butterfield

Painted Horses from Kentucky Horse Mania 
Official Horse Mania site is no longer on line. Scroll down for ten pages of images.

Horse-in-Art - This site had a lot of images (I was not able to access images last I checked. I have left the link in case images are returned)

Equine Art Guild: Gateway to Equestrian Art on the Web. Some contemporary artists (I have not viewed all of these):

Trail of Painted Ponies: Life size horses painted by Native American artists. 

Robert Vavra - Contemporary photographer - beautiful work! Robert Vavra is a horse photographer

Bev Doolittle has many good ones (her 2004 calendar has several of my favorites)
Bev Doolittle prints and background information Bev Doolittle prints   more images
Many more online, too.

Deanna Cummins - World of Equine Sculpture  Deanna created the work on this site at the age of 17! You will find amazing cast bronze horse sculptures and an explanation of her processes. 

Running Horse - Picture of the Week - Doolittle This link has many good horse paintings/illustrations. Just click on any of the names below.
Here is the home page for The Running Horse - click on Picture of the Week:

Equestrian Art - ArtLex (many sources of images for PowerPoint)
Equine Art - Horse Art ArtLex

Additional images online for Equestrian Art

Saint on Horseback  Getty 
Dogon figure
Batak - Indonesia
African terra-cotta
From Ghana - a gold weight
More from Africa
Yoruba
From Benin 
National Gallery of African Art  Search for imagery in African Art - horse you will find many wonderful images

Horses on Parade - Several links - Street Art Around the World

See Linda Radak's "Rock On" Horse Sculpture - She has some all white casts available that she is willing to sell for her cost ($50.00) to any art teacher who wants to paint your own version of Horses on Parade. Email Linda for details. See more work on her site. Wonderful Art Dolls!

LOTS more horse art out there. Add to this list with your favorites. I have a Oaxacan animal sculpture lesson that is adaptable....an African abstract animal lesson that is adaptable (ceramic animal lesson, too)

I had planned a "Year of the Horse" sculpture for my middle school students and had all sorts of sculptures (images) through the ages - along with 2-D works to show via PowerPoint. I had many equestrian figure sculptures to show as well. I was going to do a sculpture lesson (wire and foil tooling) with Butterfield and Calder as primary influences.

INTERDISCIPLINARY CONNECTIONS  

Patty Knott sent me a great site PBS "Horse and Rider" -- that has links to many great sites. You could get lost in horses for days! But wow - the interdisciplinary opportunities to connect! 
I am so jealous of you in the classroom who can do these things and make learning so much FUN! Horses relate to art - science and social studies - lots of opportunity to introduce cultures - literature connections, too.

Wild Horses - An American Romance This is one link that fascinated me
http://www.pbs.org/wildhorses/

Wild Horses of Mongolia (with Julia Roberts!):

Nature: Horses - Horsepower and more:

Horses and History - by Melinda Maidens:

Fossil Horses: developed by the Florida Museum of Natural History.

International Museum of the Horse  Artists (see some artists at work)
Exhibits (Online Exhibits - China and more)

And here is the link that took me on this journey:
Horse and Rider - Be sure to check lesson plans.

This is what Scout Report had to say:
This Web site is the online companion to the recent PBS NATURE documentary "Horse and Rider," which "explores a fascinating partnership between animal and human." Click on For Teachers on the main Web page to find an interdisciplinary lesson plan for grades 9-12. The lesson, titled Creating the "Perfect" Horse, has students study horse biology and behavior, explore the reasons why different horse breeds were developed, and analyze research findings to determine if breeding an all-purpose horse is practical or even possible. The lesson plan provides downloadable worksheets, and the main Web page contains some fun special features, including video clips. This site is also reviewed in the September 19, 2003 NSDL Life Sciences Report. [RS] (Copyright Scout Report 2004)

HORSE LESSON PLANS AND IDEAS:

"Exquisite Horse" Browse this site and come up with your own lesson plan. Create fanciful, imaginary head and tails of horses or any animal. Invent new animals/beasties. Have student make a class flip book.

Rock Art by Mary Jane Hadley

Watercolor using the work of Béatrice Bulteau - with experimental techniques. See Water Media Techniques by Linda Fields or Watercolour Techniques from Sue Galos

Hidden Pictures (using art of Bev Doolittle) by Bunki Kramer (tweak to have more of a horse emphasis)

Horse Sculptures - Stick Horses from Sue Stevens and more

Introductory Lesson - "Horse Awareness Test" by Maggie White

From Maggie: I've done this with my high school and art education students. It drives home the concept of their CONCEPTION of an object (what they think something looks like) and their PERCEPTION (what they actually observe). 

Here is the handout that she wrote up for this exercise.

THE H.A.T. (Horse Awareness Test)

This is a great first-day-of-school icebreaker (usually takes two periods). It's fun, teaches them about contours and proportions, and helps demonstrate the importance of observation when learning to draw. This is an adaptation of a "test" developed by one of my graduate professors, Warren Anderson. His was called the S.A.T. (Saguaro Awareness Test). Since we have no saguaros but plenty of horses around here, I adapted it to something the students are very familiar with. You'll have to do the same (their sneakers? a local landmark? a school bus?). Prepare slides showing various aspects of the object, or a good transparency from a clear photograph. Work from a photograph, not another artist's rendition.

Give each student a piece of paper and ask them to draw, to the best of their ability, the subject you've chosen. The entire object should be shown (i.e., the horse can't be standing in tall grass or deep water) and should fill as much of the paper as possible. Give them 20-30 minutes for this.  When time's up, they should put down their pencils while you show them the slides and point out specific characteristics of the object. I introduce the terms conception and perception: oftentimes, our concept of what an object looks like does not correspond to what it actually looks like. Drawing is largely a matter of learning how to really observe what is there. If the actual object is not available, they should work from photographs. Other artists' work may be stylized or inaccurate.

I show them how to use their pencils to measure (like "real artists"), estimate proportions, and gauge curves and angles compared to the straight pencils. They measure the proportions of their own drawings--no erasing and correcting!--as well. The visual analysis takes another 20-30 minutes. They then turn their papers over and re-draw the object; this time, the transparency remains projected so they can observe the horse and measure the proportions and contours (you could also have color photographs to put out at the tables - horse in a variety of poses). This requires quite a bit more time than the first drawing. The difference between the two drawings is usually pretty dramatic. I always save the drawings to hand back at the end of the year, which gives them a good laugh at what amateurish artists they used to be.