Ms. McK writes that one day about 15 years ago she spied a near 6 foot tall bronze horse in a shop window. Ms. McK always loved horses, so she went in the antique shop and found the horse was not plastic, or fiberglass, but cast hollow bronze. She set about haggling for it. She ended up bringing her mattress in the back of her truck to insure “Equus” a safe ride home. As you see, Equus dominates her living room, towering over her stacked stereo.
Ms. McK asked me to look into this large beast’s history. What a history I found! Let’s go back to Rome, where two horses, well over life-sized, stood on the Quirinal Hill, occupied by a pair of semi-nude grooms, attempting to get control of the beasts, circa the third century, copied from the Greek.
Louis XIV recognized the Bronze Horse mythological power
Louis XIV, the Sun King, commissioned the French sculptor Nicolas Coustou to re-imagine this pair for his palace, the Chateau de Marly. Very appropriate for the Sun King, as in the myths of the Egyptians, Greeks, Armenians, Norse, and Hindus, a horse pulls the sun into the dawn.
After the Sun King’s horses stood at the palace for two-generations the French Revolution destroyed Chateau de Marly. But the two giant horses were moved to the Champs-Elysees. Not to be outdone, as a tribute to the Duke of Wellington by the English, a single figure was erected at Hyde Park Corner. Germany cast copies of the horse figure on top of a museum in Berlin. Then the Russians did huge copies at the ends of the Anichkov Bridge. New York ordered a pair from sculptor Fred MacMonnies for Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Of course, horses are semi-divine in mythology: in Greece, the Hippoi Athanatoi was the children of the four winds, the horses of the Gods.
How did Ms. McK grab a piece of such history?
Many of these bronze sculptures were modeled “after” Louis XIV’s the Sun King’s horses, called Marly Horses, named for the Palace, the Chateau de Marly. “Marly” horses almost 6 feet high and rearing almost exactly like Ms. McK’s are offered by bigbronze.com. They stand 59″ tall, 46″ long, 22″ wide in bronze, weighing about 700lbs. The asking price for a pair is $6,857, then you pay shipping. There’s a single horse offered like Ms. McK’s for the “would you take it” price of $5,000, without shipping.
So Ms. McK, you own a 20th century version of a 17th century Marly horse, which has a history reaching back to Greece. Of course yours is a 20th century reproduction, possibly cast by such a factory as Big Bronze.
How do I know it is a re-cast?
What you see in a re-cast (reproduction) is a lesser finesse in the details. The cast for a reproduction bronze is made by applying casting material, such as clay, to the outside of the sculpture. A reverse of the lost wax technique which creates the bronze by pouring molten bronze IN a mold.
I set the replacement cost of Mrs. McK’s horse at $6,000. Replacement cost is the value appraisers use for insurance purposes, and this value INCLUDES shipping of such a gargantuan object.