The White Horse, 2008

In 2008, Mark Wallinger won The Ebbsfleet Landmark Project, an international competition to build a monument at Ebbsfleet in Kent. Wallinger’s winning entry, a white horse, 25 times life-size, and standing some 50 metres tall, was designed to look out over what was once Watling Street. The White Horse in Spring Gardens is a life-sized version of this sculpture.

White Horse illustrates Wallinger’s continuing fascination with the horse, and its emblematic status in our national history. The origins of the white horse as the emblem of Kent can be traced from 'Horsa' - the derivation of the modern word horse - a semi-mythological Anglo-Saxon leader who landed near Ebbsfleet on the Isle of Thanet in the 6th century. The White Horse sculpture relates to the ancient history of hillside depictions of white horses in England but the pose is familiar from current depictions of thoroughbred stallions and has been replicated throughout the history of art from Stubbs’ painting of Eclipse to Wallinger’s own paintings of stallions from the Darley Stud.

The Thoroughbred was first developed at the beginning of the 18th century in England, when native mares were crossbred with imported Arabian stallions. Every racehorse in the world is descended from these animals. 90% from the Darley Arabian, the most dominant influence on the breed.