Hong Kong Palace Museum | “Heavenly Horses: Masterpieces from the Palace Museum” Thematic Exhibition Talk | Herdsmen in Ancient Saddle and Horse Paintings

In ancient times, horse herders shouldered a series of arduous tasks, including feeding, grazing, breeding and training official horses, being the true executors of horse management system. However, their figures are rarely seen in saddle-horse paintings. Instead, traveling scholars, nobles, and the xiguan—horse officials in ancient China—that carry a scholarly essence, are more commonly seen. Tracing back to the Tang and Song dynasties, paintings depicting real-life scenes of horse herders were more common. After the Song dynasty, literati painting flourished, and these documentary paintings of pasturing horses were usually created based on sketch models or by imitations, in which the creators might lack relevant experience in real life.

This talk will discuss how these changes shed light on our understanding of ancient Chinese horse administration and the development of saddle and horse paintings.

This talk accompanies the thematic exhibition “Heavenly Horses: Masterpieces from the Palace Museum”, which will be on view in Gallery 4 at the Hong Kong Palace Museum from 20 March 2026 to 17 March 2027. The exhibition is jointly organised by the Hong Kong Palace Museum and the Palace Museum, and exclusively sponsored by the Institute of Philanthropy.

The talk will be livestreamed on the online platforms of the HKPM WeChat Channels, as well as Museum Headlines and Zaiyi.

Jointly organised by:

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