Re: uffington horse and the sun | Forum

Uffington White Horse 29

Image by wysefool

uffington horse and the sun

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tiompan Aug 18, 2017 22:13:10

Replying to thesweetcheat

thesweetcheat wrote:

[quote="tiompan"] But even from there, if the sun is behind the viewer as ED suggests, the horse is still running generally towards it, not away from it, as the horse is clearly angled so that the head is nearer to the viewer than the tale is. The horse is going to run past the viewer as it heads along the side of the hill, it's not running away from them.

But you know that isn't true , because you know what direction the horse is headed in ,if it were moving .
That is the bottom line it is not heading towards any sunset no matter what the author imagined .
There are countless points where the entire horse is in view and with the observer facing it the sunset will not be to their right . It's just a case of trawling through pics to find examples .The point 51.578610 ,-1.575137 would be a good example there must be pics from that point .
But what does it matter, that when observing a monument the sunset would be to your right or left or straight on or behind you ? Do you really believe that is salient ? What would it imply etc ?

thesweetcheat Aug 18, 2017 22:30:17

Replying to tiompan

tiompan wrote:

But you know that isn't true , because you know what direction the horse is headed in ,if it were moving .

I've given my view - it's running along the crest of the hill, not over it. A hill that lies generally SW in front of the horse, and from a distance (like the train line) the in-and-out of the manger is effectively flattened out to present a broad NE/SW canvas for it to run across.

tiompan wrote:

There are countless points where the entire horse is in view and with the observer facing it the sunset will not be to their right . It's just a case of trawling through pics to find examples .The point 51.578610 ,-1.575137 would be a good example there must be pics from that point .

For anyone looking SE or south (the best angles to see the horse from), the sunset will always be on their right. Sure, if you stand on the hillside above the horse and look down on it, the sun will be on your left. But that's not a good angle to see the horse from at all and I don't believe its artist intended it to be viewed from there.

tiompan wrote:

But what does it matter, that when observing a monument the sunset would be to your right or left or straight on or behind you ? Do you really believe that is salient ? What would it imply etc ?

But we're not talking about "a" monument, or monuments generally, where that would clearly be ridiculous. We're talking about a specific monument in the form of a galloping horse, on the side of a hill that lies broadly NE/SW, with its head on the right when viewed from the angle that best makes sense of it as a horse (i.e from the north or northwest) and from where the sunset is on the viewer's right as they look towards the horse.