Choosing the cover of "Mr. Summerhaye's Horse"

When I started to think about what the cover of Mr. Summerhaye’s Horse would look like, I decided to use the same process as for As Winter Came and Went: that was to use as an inspiration a painting from the same period and recreate it to fit the story. 

The cover of As Winter Came and Went already featured Summer the horse and was inspired by a painting by Horace Vernet. I copied it, changing the colour of the horse, as well as the background. 

The painting I used for Mr. Summerhaye’s horse was a French one as well, done by Theodore Géricault (1791-1824). One of Géricault’s best known paintings is "Le Radeau de la Méduse" ("The Raft of the Medusa," 1818-1819), but he was also a prolific painter of horses. I really like this part of his work, and the vibrant, expressive paintings he made of those animals, which he obviously loved – though his many riding accidents played a part in his premature death. 

When I was visiting the Château de Chantilly, near Paris, some time ago, and looking at the art collections on display there, my eye was caught by a medium-sized, undated oil-painting by Géricault, depicting a black horse being led by a man out of a stable. Somehow, this painting reminded me of the fictional horse who gallops through the pages of As Winter Came and Went. Probably because of his black coat with white markings, and because the horse in the painting is probably one who had been imported from a foreign land (he has a dished nose like an Arabian horse). 

The château de Chantilly where the painting is displayed.

At the time, I was getting As Winter Came and Went ready for publication, and had already made (and I think revealed) the cover. Gazing at this painting, I found myself regretting that I had not used this one instead of the other. 

Fast forward to 2020: having decided that I was going to self-publish the novella about Summer, I had no hesitation choosing “Cheval sortant de l’écurie” (“Horse going out of the stable”) as the basis for the artwork I would use for the cover of the book. 

I did not copy it faithfully (though I do wish I could paint like Géricault!) and the result is a simplified reinterpretation of the original: I used the portrait rather than landscape format (because it is more convenient for a book cover), I darkened the background (and took out a lot of details), I took out the man and changed the horse’s markings to better fit the description I give of Summer.