Sir Charles Warre Malet's String of Racehorses at Exercise

Francis Sartorius the elder, 1734–1804

ca. 1800

Oil on canvas

Yale Center for British Art

In 1798, Charles Warre Malet retired from the British East India Company’s service and returned to England, where he purchased a country house and estate, Wilbury Park, in Wiltshire. His horses can be seen parading around the house’s grounds in this oil painting. At first, the rolling green hills appear typical of a British landscape painting. However, on closer examination, these knolls dotted with yellow and deep-green shrubs also suggest the lands around Poona, of the kind depicted in Gangaram’s Tambat’s nearby watercolor of a river nourishing the foliage in the region. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection