Santa Fe New Mexico

Romantic Stroll

 

Original Oil Painting

by Vladimir Kush

20" x 12"

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A horse is one of the animals that accompany man from the ancient times. In classification terms, there is a human archetype and a horse archetype.

In Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels there is a land of 'houyhnhnms' - an imaginary breed of horses with human-like intelligence. According to the edifying philosophy offered by Swift "these noble Houyhnhnms are endowed by nature with a general disposition to all virtues, and have no conceptions or ideas of what is evil in a rational creature." Their main virtues are friendship and good will towards all of their kind. "They will have it that nature teaches them to love the whole species, and it is reason only that makes a distinction of persons, where there is a superior degree of virtue."

Key concepts
An image of two animals in love, strolling down the avenue in a park in the fall, is an allegory of human moral values of mutual love and devotion. 

As they trot away from us, their steps ring with the imperative of abandoning our selfishness. In a way, it is a symbol of the progress made by a human being on the road to becoming a 'social animal.'