Praise Your Work Horses!

From December 16 through 22, it is Tell Someone They're Doing a Good Job Week.

Let people know their hard work is appreciated! Tell your colleagues in the office and people serving you in stores and restaurants when they do a good job. It boosts morale, and it will make you smile, too!

Today's featured artwork, Work Horse, was made by Anna Hyatt Huntington, a prolific artist known for her animal sculpture. Throughout her career horses and equestrian sculptures, often on a heroic scale, were her favored subjects. Beginning at the turn of the century, she frequently depicted the encounter between horse, man, and nature, as in this 1963 work, representing a plow horse and farmer struggling against the wind. A monumental-scale version of this work may be found in Brookgreen Gardens, a sculpture park established by the artist and her husband Archer Milton Huntington in 1931 near Charleston, South Carolina. The museum's sculpture is quarter-life size.

To find more examples of Huntington's sculpture, search our Inventory of American Sculpture.

Source: George Gurney. Smithsonian American Art Museum curatorial files, 1995.

Pictured: Anna Hyatt Huntington, 1876–1973, Work Horse, 1963, bronze, 23 7/8 x 33 x 10 1/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington through Mrs. Carlos Davila.