Upper-class Dutchmen aspired to the life of an English gentleman. The fabulously rich banker and art collector Adriaan van der Hoop owned racehorses and, like members of the English aristocracy, had portraits made of his prizewinners. The picture’s style is also English: the horse is painted in profile, in cool bright tones, set in a sober composition. The horse stands in a meadow in Van der Hoop’s estate near Haarlem.