the beauty of loping

thanks wikiart.org (PD)

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec painted this oil of a Horsewoman and Dog  around 1899.  It's short on exact detail, but huge on feeling and power.  The horsewoman is rendered sketchily, just a gray and black shadow atop the barrel-chested force of her chestnut mount (where are his ears, I wonder?).  Meanwhile, alongside, a dog curves in full lope, a form I know well from watching our own dog run at top speed and loving it.  This is all the more unexpectedly poignant when you recall the artist himself couldn't run.  How he must have missed being able.