Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (Venice 1727-1804)

Gealt and Knox compare this drawing to Oriental lancer approaching a town in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (J. Bean and W. Griswold, 18th Century Italian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1990, pp. 262-3, no. 261). Of nearly identical dimensions, both have a horse charging towards a distant town led by a dog and observed by an old man wearing a turban. The Crocker drawing also includes a second horse with a rider in the distance, and a Punchinello lying, perhaps dead, in front of a walled town. These incongruous elements make for an elusive subject, and are typical of Domenico's inventive fantasies.
As Gealt and Knox note, equestrian subjects have a unique place in Venetian art as the city's canals and bridges would prohibit it from being an urban pursuit. Domenico often placed horses and riders in indeterminate landscapes with vaguely orientalist figures adding a further air of mystery to these scenes.
The horse is repeated in reverse in a drawing that was sold at Sotheby's Parke Bernet, New York, 22 November 1970, lot 25.