Horses on the inner court of a barn - Charles Tschaggeny (1815-1894)

Oil on panel

Signed lower left: "C. Tschaggeny 1837."

In this painting we can see two horses standing in the inner court of a barn, a man beside them is busying himself with a burlap sack. The barn was rendered in great detail, almost making the viewer able to count the woodgrains on the wooden panels.
Charles Tschaggeny was a Belgian painter, who mainly depicted genre pieces, animal paintings and marines in a romantic style.
Tschaggeny was a pupil of Eugène Verboeckhoven, with whom he would also work with later in his career. Like his teacher he specialized in animal paintings and by the 1840s his reputation as a talented horse painter was established, because Wilhelm II, king of the Netherlands, tasked him to make a portrait of him, riding his horse.