As one of the pioneers of Chinese artists in French, Sanyu always had extraordinary views for the world, and that's how he achieved his unique painting style. He's more into still subjects like nudes, characters, flowers and animals, and he only paints about these subjects throughout his lifetime. Among them, animal paintings reflect more about the artis's sharp observation and his inner imaginational world. His best friend Robert Frank (b.1924) recalls that during Sanyu's residence in New York after 1940, he sometimes likes to quietly observe animals, and he could spend hours to write stories about animals. Therefore we can assume there is a different world in the artist's heart, and that's why he can express freely in his animal paintings.

In his early works, he sometimes put little animals in nude or still subject paintings'background as a decoration, and sometimes, he put animals in a world of pure white, when he gets older, the animal in his paintings gets smaller, as if he's trying to show solitude spirit under the infinite sky. History museum researcher Gao Yu-zhen in her article "No direction home: Sanyu's world of paintings"mentioned, "Most of the animals in Sanyu's paintings attach to the boundless ground, apart from the mood of vicissitudinary; they also bring up the sadness from the poem by Chen Tzu-ang: "Ahead I cannot see the ancient faces; Behind I cannot see the coming ages. I brood upon the endless of Nature, Lonely and sick at heart, with falling tears." Sanyu's using small subjects to bring up the whole picture had accomplished infinite possibilities. That's how Sanyu created his own unique style in his paintings, without sedulously emphasizing the fusion of east and west, let alone comparing the two." Through an artistic point of view, animal paintings are very primary and important to Sanyu, therefore the animal subjects can be found in almost all the paintings he painted in his lifetime, even Sanyu's last painting is also about animals.

Sanyu loves to paint animals;"horses"repeatedly appeared in all of his paintings. According to Miss Rita Wong compiled bio-bibliography (please refer to " Sanyu - A Catalogue RaisonnéOil paintings" 2001, p. 46), she mentioned that "horses"has multiple meanings to Sanyu, for example, Sanyu's father was famous for his horse paintings, horses are Sanyu's favorite animals, and his French ex-wife's name Marcelle pronounced like "Ma"(horse pronounced in Chinese), it has been said that he also call his wife "Ma"as her nick name.

No doubt, it is often Sanyu gave animals human characteristics in his paintings, even female characteristics, he sometimes make a horse looks sexy like women's gestures, maybe Sanyu painted what he saw in women into horses, by using to horses to represents feminine. His father loves to paint horses, plus that it is his major to entertainment to watch the Beijing circus show in Szechwan, therefore horses are also Sanyu's memories in his childhood. With a great love towards animals, Sanyu also often visit zoos with friends after he leaves China. Therefore, when it comes to paint animals, Sanyu always has a special tenderness towards them.

In his arrangements for the picture, Sanyu sometimes paints a single horse bows, sometimes he paints a horde of them with different gestures. There are quite many of them come with" two horses" therefore Sanyu clearly likes to present his theme this way. Maybe the " two horses" resembles lovers or couples like the"mandarin ducks"in traditional Chinese culture, they sometimes run on the fields, play together; sometimes their necks winds and their bodies lean on together. Although Sanyu loves to paint nudes, however there aren掐 too many women in Sanyu's story of life, his not a Casanova as he seemed. It has been said that he adored Jiang Bi-wei who accompanied her husband Hsu Pei-hung to study in France, however Jiang returned to China in 1927 and they rarely occur simultaneously, Sanyu lived together with his ex-wife for three years, however their marriage lasts only three years also, all the love stories of Sanyu ends before 1930. His friends said that Sanyu was often alone; perhaps it is because his misfortune in his art and career, therefore he chose to be alone for the rest of his lives.

Jonathan Hay, the professor of art history in New York University said that"H orses, in fact, were Sanyu's single most important animal theme. Horse paintings constitute one of the most ancient Chinese genres, with a history that can be traced back to the seventh century. The entire span of this history has remained relevant into modern times: for the Chinese horse painter, compositional types developed in the remote past are as relevant as anything more recent. The enduring appeal of horse painting lies in the accumulated metaphoric density of the genre which allows an artist to push it in a political, social, or personal direction or even to overlay meanings of different kinds."(Jonathan Hay,"Sanyu's Animals""Sanyu, Language of the Body" ARAA and Skira editore, Paris, 2004, p. 97)

When people are studying Sanyu's paintings, they often distinguish his styles by periods, most of them from the 1930's to 1960's. However, Jonathan Hay had a different view on his animal paintings from different periods:"In the earlier part of his career, his attention went primarily to the image of the animal itself, which by means of a combination of rhythmic line, a carefully calculated silhouette, and unexpected postures took on a gravity-defying weightlessness. In several paintings from the 1930s he reinforced the effect by using pale line on a dark background, so that the image appears to be transparent; but he later eschewed this rather literal device (Leopard [1931]). In the nineteen-forties came a shift as he turned his attention to the landscape possibilities of what had been a purely abstract ground. By the suggestion of a horizon line or some ambiguously defined topographic feature, his animals-now radically scaled down-became the inhabitants of a much larger environment. As Sanyu became more comfortable with this new mode, explicitly rendered trees, mountains, and skies made their appearance (Tiger, Two Horses in a Red Landscape). In the process, these animal in-landscape paintings become increasingly reminiscent of Indian miniatures, not only in their colors and space but also in their fusion of the narrative vignette with a complete natural world (Leopards at Night, Cat and Crow). A dialogue always exists between the physicality of the silhouetted animals-each one a condensed crystallization of movement-and that of the landscape, which takes on its own rhythmic character. In their simplest form the landscape features pull the eye hither and thither across the surface, in a supple horizontal play of elastic topography that tends to echo and amplify the postures of the animals (Eagle). In the (later?) nineteen-fifties Sanyu introduced a centrally placed tree, whose cut-off trunk imposes a perceptual closeness that contradicts the distance implied by the small scale of the animals. The dialogue survives, however, with a leopard tail, for example, echoing the turn of a branch (Leopard in a Tree). In other paintings of the period, the animals are depicted in motion, taking the eye on a journey in which we quickly become aware that the landscape separately embodies its own potential journey for the eye (Giraffes)"(Jonathan Hay,"Sanyu's Animals""Sanyu, Language of the Body" ARAA and Skira editore, Paris, 2004, pp. 98-99)

"Galloping Pintos"was finished in the 1940's; it displayed two horses running in the field. This painting was owned by the US photographer Robert Frank for over half century. In 1947, Frank moved from Europe to the US to work for"Harper's Bazaar"as a professional photographer, two years later, his colleague from the art department told him that there is an artist named Sanyu who came from Paris is looking for a place to stay in New York, Frank agreed to exchange their studios because he was also planning to expand his career in Europe in the next few years. Actually when they were connecting each other through Harper's Bazaar, Sanyu was in New York, and they accidentally became room mates. They were still in touch even when Sanyu moved back to Paris, they became close friends.

With Frank's encouragement, in 1950 Sanyu held a personal exhibition in Passedoit Gallery, New York. 29 Paintings he brought from Paris were exhibited, and none of them were sold. Later, Sanyu went back to Paris, and left these paintings to Frank, as a reward for Franks favors in New York, and"Galloping Pintos"is from this collection.

Sanyu had over 200 oil paintings; however it has been hard to find any of his 1940's paintings since 1997. Due to the World War II was just over in 1940, Europe was depredated by the war and lack of goods and materials, Sanyu also needed financial support, he even tried to carve animal sculptures with gypsum, and he didn't have enough oil paintings indeed. Until 1997, when Frank's collection exposed to the public, the world thus had the chance to have a peak on Sanyu's different style; it no doubt showed how Sanyu changed from his pink style in the 1930's to his mild, full and rich style in the 1950 to 60's. His paintings from the 1940s are simple, abstracted, with more unpainted canvas spaces, very similar to a minimalism style. Especially the animals in the picture, tenderness surround them.

For example, in "Galloping Pintos"two horses lean on each other closely, briskly marching forward. Sanyu used simply grayish white with dark green to create the space between sky and the land. This painting could be the precedence of the "Galloping Horses"which now collected by National Museum of History. The look and the gesture of the horses in these two paintings look identical, however the horses in the 1940 one looks bigger in the picture, and looks a lot smaller in the later one, it somehow reflects the change of the artist's mental status. In 1940, Sanyu had been through the cruelty of war, but he remained hopeful to the future, and that's why he went to New York. In "Galloping Pintos" we can discover how the artist's cling to the past, the way he portraits the horses are so dear and affecting, the artist painted it freely and was very satisfied with it, that's why he repainted another "Galloping Pintos"and gave it to his dear friend Frank, and that one is the "Galloping Pintos"which now collected by National Museum of History, Taipei.