De La Guérinière Print | The Courbette

Expertly printed on luxurious 200gsm fine art paper with an elegant smooth finish, each piece is produced using a museum-grade giclée process. We use only the highest quality UV- or pigment-based inks, ensuring exceptional color depth and archival longevity: creating resistance to fading for over a century under suitable conditions.

We offer our prints in two size formats: inches and centimeters. If you’re in a region where inches are the framing standard (such as the US), we recommend selecting the inch-based sizes. For countries using the metric system, the centimeter variants are the best choice.

Our prints are designed to fit standard frame sizes, including those with or without a passe-partout (mat). For the most refined presentation, we recommend using a passe-partout, as it enhances the artwork’s visual impact.

Please note that for the common 20 x 29 cm passe-partout window, our A4 print size (21 x 29.7 cm) fits optimally.

For a 29 x 39 cm window, our 30 x 40 cm prints are the best choice.

Please note that some borders might be visible, based on the artwork. We design our products to accommodate to modern frames, but this is sometimes unavoidable based on the original dimensions of the artwork.

François Robichon de La Guérinière, in L’École de Cavalerie, distinguished the courbette from similar movements such as the mézair and the terre-à-terre, noting their shared two-beat rhythm but differing execution. He described the courbette as more measured and sustained - a collected gait in which the horse raises itself onto the haunches, then lowers the forehand while the hind legs follow in an even, swift, and low cadence. Crucially, both hind legs must move on the same horizontal line; neither should extend beyond the other. The result is a controlled, and highly collected movement that could be performed not only forward, but sideways, or even backwards.

A now-lost variation, in which the horse moves in the shape of a cross, was so intricate that even de La Guérinière admitted it had already fallen out of practice by his time: a mark of its extraordinary difficulty.

This engraving, attributed to the talented Charles Parrocel, features a rider whose identity is not definitively known. The coat of arms belongs to the Walramic branch of the House of Nassau, a noble family of German origin with reigning princes dating back to the 12th century. The figure may represent Charles, Prince of Nassau-Usingen (1712–1775), a known patron of the arts and publishing, who founded a printery in Wiesbaden: possibly linked to the printing of de La Guérinière’s work. Though he may have been too young to model for this plate, other likely candidates include Karl-August (1685–1753) or Karl-Ludwig (d. 1723), whose Germanic names align with "Charles."

The younger Charles, who was declared of age in 1733 (also the year L’École de Cavalerie was published) is also remembered for his economic reforms, including his unusual decree banning the consumption of coffee in order to preserve domestic wealth.