A CARVED WOOD AND POLYCHROME-DECORATED CENTAUR

In the 1982 Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition catalogue of the Guennol Collection, Adele Earnest notes that, "Scholars generally agree that the mythological Centaur, half man and half horse, was probably inspired by the wild horsemen of Thessaly who joined the Persian invasion of the Peloponnesus and rode with such terrifying speed the Greeks thought that horse and man were one. Whatever the origin, the Centaur as a theme has survived in fine art and in the popular arts throughout the centuries. The Guennol Collection includes a nineteenth-century American interpretation. Found in Utica, New York, the carving is attributed to a Mr. Dines, who, according to local sources, carved and painted it for his grandson" (p. 230).