Pegasus Without Wings by Helga Jaunegg - Winter 2007 Issue of Horses in Art Magazine

Pegasus Without Wings

by Helga Jaunegg

Above the Ground — Oil on linen, 24 x 28, by Helga Jaunegg,
“I could hardly resist temptation to paint the Levadeur with the golden show-bridle, gorgeous breastplate and beautiful red blanket that is used in the Spanish Riding School in Vienna for the school lessons on the ground. But the “Airs” are traditionally ridden with a quite simple black bridle with curb bit and a dark green blanket with golden braid. The white saddle is used without stirrup irons. The painting also shows a black and a bay foal. Most Lipizzan foals are born black. They take on the white color when the horses are six to nine years old. A few foals are born brown and retain their color. It is traditional for the Spanish Riding School to have one bay Lipizzan in residence to avoid bad luck. I found the blooming dandelions and their seeds carried away by a breeze, ideal to emphasize the lightness and freedom of the foals in Piber. Visit Helga Jaunegg's web site at www.equus-art.com.
For every artist there are inspiring places to return to time and again to gather strength and to formulate new ideas. For me the Piber Federal Stud in Austria is such a favorite destination.

Its magnificent setting in the hilly landscape in Western Styria with view to the mountains is the ideal location for breeding Europe’s oldest cultural breed of horses, the Lipizzans. Since 1920 Federal Stud Piber is the birthplace of the famous white stallions of the Spanische Hofreitschule – the Spanish Riding School – in Vienna.

Each time I visit Piber I do many drawings from life and take some photographs at different times of the day for additional reference. The number of attractive motifs seems infinite. I fill a sketchbook with studies of Lipizzans, impressions of the beautiful landscape, buildings and figures, and try out compositional ideas. Some of these concepts become source material for my paintings, done in a traditional way by building up layers on toned linen.

The foals especially fascinate me, and there are up to fifty foals born in Piber every year.

When watching only three-week-old colts demonstrating their talent for movement, you can already see their natural disposition for certain moves. But it is a long road from the colts’ jumps in Piber to the perfection of the High School Figures of the Ballet of the White Stallions in Vienna.

The young horses spend the summer months of their third year in the stud’s own alpine pastures before promising stallions are selected for the Spanish Riding School. In the following months they will be introduced to their first training lessons in Piber before the four-year-old stallions move to Vienna; there the best ones will be trained into High School horses. This training can last up to eight years.

The result of years of training is presented at gala performances in the magnificent baroque Winter Riding Hall and at other shows worldwide. It is an unforgettable experience to marvel at the harmony between horse and rider, especially in the historical environment. And when the Lipizzans demonstrate the Airs – the Levade, Capriole or Courbette – in the course of the show, one could swear that invisible wings enable them to do these powerful and elegant movements. Visit Helga Jaunegg's web site at www.equus-art.com.

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