Horse Engravings

Drawings by Piotr Michalowski on Engravings by Czeslaw Slania 

The below beautiful drawings of horses were all made by the Polish painter Piotr Michalowsky (1800-1855), and engraved by Czeslaw Slania.  Slania loved horses, and has made more than ten different engravings of these animals. 

Piotr Michalowski was (along with Jan Matejko) one of the greatest Polish painters from the Romantic Era,  who also painted battle scenes from Napoleon's marches through Europe. At several occasions Slania has used both Michalowski's and Matejko's paintings as basis for his engravings.  Also the paintings of Jan Matejko are represented on this site. 

There exists a book with sketches of studies for horse drawings, and Slania has used this book as inspiration for the engravings, mostly as copper etchings, but also as steel engravings. 

The engravings are all numbered and signed by the engraver. The original images are very large, and I've had to reduce their size considerably to make room for them on one page, but they will still give you a fair impression of a "free-hand" engraving by Slania.  Enjoy :-)

• A full blooded still-standing stallion and trotting.   Read here for more information about the image to the left.

• Rider on a galloping horse, and a trotting horse. 

• A group of riders. 

• Horse trying to catch his own tail, and a trotting rider.

• Galloping and rearing horse.

• Although these two engravings look like each other (mirrored), they are obviously from two different print runs, as they have different numberings.  Also the engraver's signature appear differently on the two sheets.  There are also little subtle differences that could imply that it is two different engravings of a rider on a rearing horse. 

Link: 

• See also Czeslaw Slania's Horse Engraving for Kjøbenhavns Philatelist Klub (KPK). 

All scans submitted by Mr. Jerzy Krysiak (Sweden).