Self-Portrait (Inn of the Dawn Horse) | |
---|---|
Artist | Leonora Carrington |
Year | 1937-1938 |
Medium | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 65 cm× 81.2 cm(25.5 in× 32 in) |
Location | Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Self-Portrait (Inn of the Dawn Horse) is a painting executed by artist Leonora Carrington and is currently in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. [1] [2] [3] She began the painting in London in 1937 and completed it in Paris in 1938. [4] It is one of her most recognized works and has been called her "first truly Surrealist work." [5] The presence of horses and Hyenas soon became a common feature in her work. [6]
Self-Portrait features an interior space consisting of two walls meeting at a corner, a ceiling, a tiled floor, and an ornately curtained window that reveals a lush, green forest view and a white horse galloping in the distance. Carrington depicted herself seated on a chair in the foreground, gesturing to a lactating hyena on her right. Her wild tresses appear to mimic a horse's mane and the hyena's fur color. Above her head is a floating white rocking horse. The white of her breeches mirrors the white color of both the rocking horse and the horse seen in the distance, and her green jacket reflects the forest exterior. She gazes out to the viewer directly and sternly.[ original research? ]
Horses, in Carrington's work, appeared frequently and as early as 1929; they represented an aspect of her animal self as symbols of freedom and liberty. [7] Because of Carrington's interest in Celtic mythology, she would have been familiar with the Celtic goddess Epona, who appeared before her followers on a white horse. The white rocking horse floating above Carrington is most likely a reference to Pénélope, a play Carrington wrote about a young girl who is in love with her rocking horse Tartarus (or Tartar as he is known in the French version) [8]
The inclusion of the hyena may suggest an "intrusion of the wild into a domestic space," which Carrington is ultimately aligning herself with as noted by her gesture towards the female hyena and their mirrored stares towards the viewer. [9] Carrington often identified with the hyena, in the same way she identified with horses, saying in an interview from 1999, "I'm like a hyena, I get into the garbage cans. I have an insatiable curiosity." [10]
At the beginning of World War II, Carrington left the painting with German artist Max Ernst, who took it to New York in 1941. He gave it to art dealer Pierre Matisse, the youngest son of French painter Henri Matisse, sometime after December 1942, and upon his death, the painting was transferred to his widow Maria-Gaetana Matisse. In 2002, Self-Portrait was gifted to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by the Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Foundation. [11]
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