Echoes of hooves: power, memory and myth in Sanyu, Chagall and Basquiat

For the billions of people around the world who follow the Chinese lunar calendar, the Year of the Snake has just given way to the Year of the Horse. The seventh animal (of 12) in the Chinese zodiac, the horse symbolises—among other things—energy, independence, vitality and success.

The horse has been a subject of artistic fascination since time immemorial: from the Palaeolithic murals of Lascaux, painted more than 15,000 years ago, to the modern masterpieces that continue to reinterpret its image. Three such works—by Sanyu, Marc Chagall and Jean-Michel Basquiat—take centre stage in the 20th/21st Century Evening Sale in Hong Kong on March 27: Cheval agenouillé sur un tapis (Kneeling Horse on Carpet), Pastorale and Untitled.

Sanyu | Solitude in the Spotlight

Cheval agenouillé sur un tapis (Kneeling Horse on Carpet) is set in a circus with a burgundy backdrop. As a metaphorical self-portrait, embodying the artist’s image, the horse gently bows to the audience on a golden carpet, its form illuminated against a sumptuous burgundy field. The colour diffuses softly outward, drawing the gaze toward an undefined horizon. Between solemnity and solitude, the scene unfolds with a quiet yet resonant drama, as though the horse kneels at the centre of a silent spotlight. The carpet is adorned with a pattern of three Chinese motifs—fu (good fortune), lu (prosperity) and shou (longevity)—emblems of a blessed life placed beneath the horse’s feet. Their presence feels almost confessional: a gentle, hopeful invocation of a future Sanyu longed for.

Sanyu was a hippophile. His father had been a renowned painter of horses. Beyond that, the name of his wife Marcelle suggested the Mandarin word for horse (ma). According to the most recently published catalogue raisonné of the artist, Sanyu: His Life and Complete Works in Oil, he produced a total of 34 horse-themed works, nine of which feature circus imagery; one of these is now held by the National Museum of History in Taipei. Of the works combining horses with carpets patterned with the symbols of fu, lu and shou, only two are known, including this painting. Of these, only one remains extant, while the other’s whereabouts are unknown, making this work extraordinarily rare.

China has a long and rich circus tradition, one that can be traced back to the Bai Xi of the Han dynasty: a variety show which included feats of juggling, acrobatics, and horsemanship. From the late-19th century onwards, the circus became an increasingly popular subject in European art, captured by the likes of Georges Seurat, Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Sanyu’s circus imagery duly reflects a synthesis of East and West.

Born in Sichuan, he trained in Chinese calligraphy—before moving to Paris as a young man, in 1921, and spending the rest of his life there. Cheval agenouillé sur un tapis boasts the formal vocabulary of Western modernism, while employing succinct lines and blank spaces rooted in Chinese calligraphy, creating a hybrid visual language unique to Sanyu.

Sanyu’s circus, then, is a site of cross-cultural convergence. As for the horse, might it perhaps be invested with an element of self-portraiture? The artist painted the work in the 1950s-1960s, having recently endured the perils of the Second World War, and financial hardship that resulted from it. The lone horse might be interpreted as a reference to Sanyu’s solitary striving in Paris. Many of his Chinese contemporaries had made the same journey as him to France in the early decades of the 20th century, the likes of Lin Fengmian and Xu Beihong. However, by this point, most of them were back home, yet Sanyu remained in Paris, steadfast in pursuing his artistic path with unwavering resolve.

Chagall | A Pastoral Dream in Colour

In Chagall’s Pastorale, the horse does not stand alone. It shares the scene with a green-faced violinist, his lover, a proud rooster, a flowering tree, and a radiant yellow moon—an ensemble between dream and memory.

Pastorale stands as a testament to Chagall’s legacy as one of art’s great colourists. Under his brush, colour becomes not merely a vocabulary of form, but a pulse of emotion and a glimmer of the soul, assuming an indispensable, central role in every work he created. Though always integral to his imagery, colour took on a profound new intensity in his work after the Second World War, when the artist (who had lived in Paris beforehand) moved to the Mediterranean and his palette grew ever more luminous: first in the town of Vence, then in neighbouring Saint-Paul de Vence.

‘I experienced a feeling of regeneration,’ he said of the move, later in life. ‘A new energy poured through me’. With its glowing reds, yellows and greens, a sense of rebirth duly infuses Pastorale’s palette. The scene is no simple ode to Chagall’s adopted home, though. The violinist, for example, harks back to his upbringing in the town of Vitebsk (in modern-day Belarus), where music played a key role in Jewish ceremonies and festivals. The work title Pastorale alludes to a musical tradition evoking idyllic landscapes, melodies shaped by the hush of nature, harmonies infused with serenity, purity, and the gentle cadence of rural life. In this painting, Chagall transforms the musicality into colour itself, allowing viewers to drift effortlessly between sight and sounds, as if wandering through an unseen score. Within the painting’s soft rhythms and luminous atmosphere unfolds a pastoral poetry—quiet, tender, and dreamlike.

As for the horse—like the rooster, and many other animals depicted by Chagall across his career—it resembles not so much a real creature as an emotional emissary, brought into being by a combination of memory and myth. In Chagall’s artistic universe, the horse is a creature of quiet mysticism. It often appears light and buoyant, yet when it stands still, its lowered gaze and humble posture seem to glow with reverence. More than a circus performer, it becomes a guide—leading the artist beyond the confines of reality toward a realm of greater purity and freedom.

Painted in 1975-76, Pastorale reflects a moment of serenity late in Chagall’s long, peripatetic life, one shaped by exile and upheaval (including two world wars and the Russian Revolution). The following year, the work was honoured in a major exhibition organised by the National Museum of Modern Art at the Louvre to mark his 90th birthday.

Basquiat | The Gallop of a Meteoric Rise

Basquiat was just 21 when he created Untitled, a work electrified by the raw, electric energy that defined his early breakthrough. Against a field of vivid blue sky stands a triumphant, untamed horse—a creature animated by the rhythmic growl of ‘RRR’ scrawled beside it. The repeated consonant becomes a visual onomatopoeia, echoing the rumble of hooves and the breath of an animal in motion. As the horse embodies power and momentum, the insistent ‘RRR’ becomes a driving auditory pulse that animates the entire composition.

Hovering above the horse is one of Basquiat’s most important motifs: the crown. It is Basquiat’s emblem of dignity and defiance—a symbol he bestowed on artists, athletes, musicians, and ultimately on himself. In Untitled, the symbol pays tribute to horse’s enduring significance in human civilization through upheaval and transformation, from ancient warfare and royal ceremony to exploration and innovation.

Perhaps, as with Cheval agenouillé sur un tapis, there’s a hint of self-portraiture to Untitled too: the horse reflecting Basquiat’s gallop to artistic success. Untitled was painted in 1981, a watershed year in Basquiat’s career, the moment before he becomes the formidable new force in the international art world. He used a combination of oilstick and acrylic, marking his monumental leap from street art practices to a fully realized studio language. This was the moment Basquiat’s rise to fame accelerated, as critical buzz, key gallery support, and a rapidly expanding audience pushed him into the global spotlight. That year brought his first solo exhibition at Galleria d’Arte Emilio Mazzoli in Modena, Italy; representation by his first dealer (the New York-based gallerist, Annina Nosei); and Rene Ricard’s seminal essay hailing him as ‘the radiant child’, a moniker that crystalised his status as the legendary star.

From prehistoric caves to modern canvases, providing constant inspiration to artists along the way, the horse has accompanied humankind across millennia—a figure of myth, memory and power. In the case of Sanyu, Chagall and Basquiat, these were artists from different continents united by a fondness not for literal depictions of live horses, but for tapping into the rich symbolism that has developed across millennia—solitude and longing, dream and memory, momentum and destiny.

Together, their works form a modern triptych of equine imagination: the serenity of Sanyu, the dreamscape of Chagall, the raw energy of Basquiat—three masters, three visions, each leaving the horse to reign supreme on canvas. These three masterpieces, charged with monumental ‘horsepower’, are poised to gallop onto the stage of Christie’s Hong Kong, heralding a brilliant opening to the spring season.