Horse Fight, ca. 1902

Although Jean Delvin is primarily known as an art educator, he participates intensively in exhibition life. At these exhibitions he mainly displays his talent as an animalist. The theme of the corrida with its bullfights, banderillero's and picadores predominates, both in drawings and paintings. He emphasises the noble power of the animals, in which torment and movement dominate. In Horse Fight, he plays with different plans of light and shadow. Painted with a hard, southern palette, the sturdy bill radiates the influence of impressionism that Delvin is undergoing. At the 1902 Salon in Ghent, the prominent Brussels critic Octave Maus is impressed by the warm colour palette in the painting: "What interests this painting is, above all, the way the tons of hot air are poured into the light, the strong colour contrasts, the glare of the sun on a picturesque scene". In her copy of the exhibition catalogue, the painter Anna De Weert, once a pupil of Delvin, describes the painting as "le clou [du salon]".