Footnotes

Provenance
Property from a private collection, Dubai;
Acquired from the artist.

Throughout his career, Husain repeatedly depicted horses in his works. The horses are wild, symbols of power and raw energy. 'The horses are rampant or galloping; the manes, the fury, the working buttocks, the prancing legs, and the strong neighing heads with dilated nostrils are blocks of colour which are vivid or tactile or are propelled in their significant progression by strokes of the brush or sweeps of the palette knife. The activity depicted is transformed in the activity of paint.' (E. Alkazi, M. F. Husain The Modern Artist and Tradition, New Delhi, 1978, p. 3).

Dating from the 1990s, this work immortalizes the famed white horse (Duldul) of Imam Husayn ibn Ali, the grandchild of the Prophet Mohammed, whose martyrdom at Karbala in 680 CE is commemorated during the annual mourning ceremonies of Muharram. Ambushed by a neighbouring general, Husayn and his companions were brutally attacked, showered with arrows, and ultimately decapitated. Every year, an elaborately decorated wooden horse on a mounted frame is paraded through the streets of Muslim communities, symbolizing Imam Husayn ibn Ali's empty mount. In 1965, Husain visited Iraq and made a pilgrimage to Karbala, to witness the battleground upon which Imam Husayn fell. This was a time of deep spiritual confusion for Husain, and during the mid to late 1960's, as Daniel Herwitz notes, Husain's "horses now appear riderless, without the accompanying light-bodied female figures, and are frequently transfixed by arrows." (Daniel Herwitz, Husain, Bombay, 1988, p.48)

The horse is depicted in a manner that is reminiscent of a puppet or wooden effigy. Stylistically, it is painted using both a palette knife and a brush with a European cubist approach. The horses' forelegs are in mid-stride, as if it is ready to jump out of the canvas and its powerful neck is turned across its broad right flank with its neighing mouth baring teeth. The typical brush strokes used to paint the horse adds to the aggression of the horse, heighted by the potent shades of red which dominate the background and merge seamlessly with the green.
The painting is a testament to Husain's multifaceted understanding and appreciation of cultures, fusing tradition and modernity, symbolism and vitality, in a singular work of art.