In the Tale of King Mu, Son of Heaven (Mutianzi zhuan, ca. 475–221 BCE), considered the oldest extant travelogue in Chinese literature, the titular ruler journeys to the mythical Kunlun mountains, his chariot drawn by eight faithful horses toward the Queen Mother of the West. Upon arriving, he releases the steeds into a paradisiac meadow, recompense for ferrying him to the land of eternal life.

The trope of King Mu’s eight loyal horses has likewise achieved immortality, gracing jade snuff bottles and silk sleeve bands, vessels for seal paste and porcelain plates. Exploring each horse's individual character has provided artists with a peerless opportunity to demonstrate their technical and observational powers: the horses do not stand placidly, as those in stable groom portraits typically do, but gallop, gambol, and leap in celebration of their newfound liberty.

Exemplary in this regard is a silk painting in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, attributed to Zhao Mengfu (1254–1322) based on a fourth-century original by Shi Daoshi. With cocked tails, enviable curls, and long, inordinately flabby necks, the eight horses of this particular rendition chomp crazily at the air and stare down the viewer with jaundiced, oddly piercing eyes.

Particularly famous for his skill at depicting horses, Zhao believed that he had the ability to capture animals’ inner essence with his brush. The practice of evaluating steeds like this was elevated to a science in Ancient China when the horse tamer Bole pioneered the field of horse physiognomy, or xiangma. Carefully analyzing an animal’s features, he felt, could disclose key insights not only about its health but about its fundamental nature as well. A passage from The Classic of Horse Physiognomy, a fragmentary text found near the Mawangdui archaeological site, instructs practitioners on what to look for in a fine specimen, down to the minutest of details: the eyes, for instance, should resemble “a moon coming out above . . . and not yet bright.” The frequent comparisons to mountains, rivers, and heavenly phenomena, art historian Robert E. Harrist, Jr. argues, ascribe a cosmological significance to the creatures’ bodies — right proportions were indicative of a correct balance in yin, yang, and other fundamental forces.

Harrist also notes that Chinese painters of the Ming and Qing dynasties both directly cited and indirectly echoed xiangma ideals when assessing depictions of horses, even conforming their own work to physiognomic precepts. In the realm of the visual arts, horses were frequently used as a vehicle for not-so-coded political commentary, with powerful, well-groomed animals signaling good governance and harmony in affairs of state. Xiangma texts themselves encouraged this reading by yoking the physical qualities of a steed to the fate of its owner: The Classic of Horse Physiognomy states that if a horse’s shoulder is four cun (thumb-widths) long, “the rider can regulate all under heaven”.

One can only imagine what Bole and his fellow physiognomers would have made of the unruly specimens that cavort across the Met’s silk scroll, which seem to exemplify not a magisterial equilibrium of opposing forces so much as a rambunctious energetic overflow. Indeed, if painters incorporated xiangma standards into depictions of superior mounts, they also broke with them deliberately — the figure of the emaciated horse, for instance, being a known metaphor for imperial decline. Did Zhao reproduce these norm-defying animals as a kind of political rebuke? Or was he attempting to signal something else: that xiangma’s rigid strictures were incapable of capturing the kind of anarchic joy that an artistic imagination can perceive?

Unfortunately for us, but perhaps not for the steed, one of the eight horses from the silk scroll seems to have escaped the Met’s digital collections. Perhaps it’s questing after further mountains still. . .