Bridled in Silk

Beneath her, a horse carries them forward like a moving monument: a huge, muscled neck, a white face turned calm and certain, light eyes that hold no alarm. He is decorated in paper flowers and rose blossoms, tromping through wet grasses and spiderwebbed brush with the unbothered gait of power. And yet at the center of all that detonation, they both remain so still that even a house cat isn't spooked by the fanfare. The painting owes a clear debt to Picasso's fractured planes and the loose, chromatic bravado of post-impressionism. It has the presence of something that shouldn't still exist: a lost masterwork, unsigned, found leaning against the wall of a shuttered Paris attic, waiting over a century to finally be appreciated.