Riding the false horse - preparatory photographs by Jacques de Lalaing

The model is posed in front of a large oil painting, Les luteurs, a preparatory sketch for the La Lutte équestre sculptural group. (See below.)

Here, the model is also posed in front of a large painting, apparently on the same subject, though it looks slightly different.

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Jacques de Lalaing (4 November 1858, London – 10 October 1917, Brussels), Anglo-Belgian painter and sculptor, specializing in animals. Born the son of a Belgian diplomat and an English aristocrat, he was raised in England until 1875, when he moved to Brussels. He trained as an artist under Jean-François Portaels and Louis Gallait at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, showing first as a painter. But he began to sculpt in 1884. As a painter he continued to work in a realistic, naturalistic style, as a portrait painter and producing historical scenes. As a sculptor he produced allegorical bronzes and memorial art. In 1896 he became a member of the Académie Royale where he'd studied, and from 1904 through 1913 he served as its director. He died in the midst of World War I a month before his fifty-ninth birthday.

The artist.

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Perhaps his best known work, La Lutte équestre or Le combat des cavaliers (1899-1908), at the entrance to the Bois de la Cambre, Brussels.

Two vintage photographs.

Three contemporary images.

Les lutteurs, a large scale preparatory oil sketch for the sculpture, 1884.