Early eighteenth-century northern European school - Equestrian portrait of a fashionably dressed young woman, black chalk on paper with prominent chain lines; stray marks of brown ink.Our drawing is fluently executed in black chalk, the horse seen from the rear, the woman turning backwards to reveal a gentle smile. Her status is conveyed by the groomed horse that she commands with a thin whip held confidently against her hip; her fashionability is shown by her hat and riding habit trimmed with fur, its back riding up over the saddle. A high-heeled boot pushes against a stirrup. The horse’s mane streams to the left, blown by a gust coming from the direction to which the woman turns - her attention caught, perhaps, by a shout carried on the wind. Our drawing is not without wit: the horse’s rear with cut and bound tail displays that the young woman is astride a stallion. The sole focus on the horse and rider in our drawing, made without visible corrections, strongly suggests that ...