Statues with man sitting on a horse have horse holding one front leg in the air, sometimes two front legs why?

Answer 1

It has to do with how the military person died. Generally, (at least in Gettysburg), by looking at the statue, you can tell how the person died.

Four legs on ground - survived unwounded.

Two legs on ground - Killed/Died in battle

Three legs on ground (one in air) - died of wounds from battle

However, worldwide, this might be an urban myth as not all cultures follow these guidelines.

Now, for gettysburg, it does hold true overall, and here's the examples for and against.

Washington is home to more equestrian statues than any other city in the nation, and it's significant that perhaps only 10 out of 30 or more follow the convention. Here's a quick look-see at various equestrian statues in Washington and how they fit or don't fit this theory. First, some statues that follow the "rule":


FRANCIS ASBURY: 16th and Mount Pleasant NW (1924). All hooves on ground; died in peace.

FIELD MARSHAL SIR JOHN DILL: Arlington National Cemetery (1950). All hooves on ground; died of leukemia.

GEN. ULYSSES S. GRANT: Union Square, at the east end of the Mall (1922). All hooves on ground; died in peace.

MAJ. GEN. WINFIELD SCOTT HANCOCK: Seventh and Pennsylvania NW (1896). One hoof raised; wounded in battle.

MAJ. GEN. JOHN A. LOGAN: Logan Circle, Vermont Avenue, 13th and P Streets NW (1901). One hoof raised; died in peace, twice wounded.

LT. GEN. WINFIELD SCOTT: Scott Circle, 16th and Massachusetts and Rhode Island NW (1874). All hooves on ground; died in peace.

GEN. PHILIP H. SHERIDAN: Sheridan Circle, 23rd and Massachusetts NW (1908). All hooves on ground; died in peace.

GEN. WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN: 15th and Pennsylvania and Treasury Place NW (1903). All hooves on ground; died in peace, pneumonia.

MAJ. GEN. GEORGE H. THOMAS: Thomas Circle, 14th and Massachusetts NW (1879). All hooves on ground; died in peace.

JOHN WESLEY: Wesley Theological Seminary (1961). All hooves on ground; died in peace.
And now some that don't:


GEN. SIMON BOLIVAR: 18th at C and Virginia NW (1959). One hoof raised; died in peace of tuberculosis.

MAJ. GEN. NATHANIEL GREENE: Stanton Square, Maryland and Massachusetts NE (1877). One hoof raised; died in peace, unwounded.

MAJ. GEN. ANDREW JACKSON: Lafayette Park (1853). Two hooves raised; died in peace.

LT. GEN. THOMAS J. (STONEWALL) JACKSON: Manassas (1940). All hooves on ground; wounded by own men and died.

MAJ. GEN. PHILIP KEARNY: Arlington National Cemetery (1914). One hoof raised; died in battle.

MAJ. GEN. GEORGE B. McCLELLAN: Connecticut Avenue and Columbia Road NW (1907). One hoof raised; died in peace, unwounded.

BRIG. GEN. JAMES B. McPHERSON: McPherson Square, 15th between K and I streets NW (1876). One hoof raised; shot and killed in battle.

BRIG. GEN. COUNT CASIMIR PULASKI: 13th and Pennsylvania NW (1910). One hoof raised; died in battle.

LT. GEN. GEORGE WASHINGTON: Washington Circle, at 23rd and K and Pennsylvania and New Hampshire NW (1860). One hoof raised; died in peace of cynache trachealis. Washington Cathedral (1959). One hoof raised.
An additional rumored statue code is prevalent in Virginia's Monument Avenue in Richmond. The Civil War statues honoring Gens. Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, J.E.B. Stuart, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis are pointed in distinct directions, according to local lore. Those who died in the war face north. If they survived, they face south.

Upon examination, local lore appears to have something going for it. Ah, but appearances are deceiving. The equestrian statues of Lee, facing south, and Jackson, facing north, do fit the formula, and the horse of Stuart, who was mortally wounded at Yellow Tavern in 1864, faces north. The heads of Stuart, Davis, and Matthew Fontaine Maury face east.

"To the best of anyone's knowledge, the position and pose of the statue do not signify anything," said Frances Pollard, a curator at the Virginia Historical Society.

Those who should known better continue to pass along this piece of folklore as fact, as evidenced by this July 2001 question and response in Marilyn vos Savant's Ask Marilyn column:


Q: One often sees commemorative statues of soldiers mounted on horses with their forelegs in various positions. Is there any significance to the difference?
A: Yes, although some sculptors may be unaware of the tradition or choose to ignore it. A historian at Arlington National Cemetery explains that when both forelegs of the horse are in the air, the rider died in battle. When only one foreleg is raised, the rider died of his wounds afterward. And when all four legs are on the ground, the rider later died of unrelated causes.

Hmm . . . a vocational "tradition" that those who practice the trade are either complete unaware of, or choose to ignore when they do know of it. That reminds me of my husband's jocular reponse whenever someone catches him wearing a piece of clothing backwards or inside-out: "It's a fad, but nobody else knows about it yet." Given that the alleged statuary code consists of three poses (no hooves raised, one hoof raised, and two hooves raised), the odds that a rider's manner of death would correspond to his horse's pose through plain chance are one in three, which is the proportion we find when surveying the equestrian statues in our nation's capital — that is, only about ten out of thirty statues in Washington, D.C., follow the "traditional" pattern. (Don't write to tell us that the odds of a given person's manner of death matching the "correct" statuary code are one in nine, not one in three. If you think they're one in nine, you need to brush up on your basic statistics.)

The connection between statuary horses hooves' and the manner of deaths of their riders is not "tradition," but — like the well-known but mundane list of "coincidences" between the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations — an attempt to create an interesting piece of information (in this case, something akin to a "secret code") by finding patterns in randomness through the expedient of simply ignoring or explaining away all the cases that don't fit the pattern. This type of statuary lore is neither new nor unique to equestrian statuary, as a similar "tradition" (i.e., fallacy) was attributed well over a century ago, in the same fashion, to sculptors who had created effigies of knights several hundred years earlier:

Here's a link if you choose to look more.

http://www.snopes.com/military/statue.htm

Answer 2

There is a variety of opinion on this subject. The commonly circulated story is that if a statue of a horse and rider depicts the horse with two hoof off the ground (i.e. rearing up), the rider died in battle. A statue with one hoof up indicates that the rider was wounded, and either died of his wounds later, or did not, depending on the story. A horse with all four feet down indicates the rider survived the war intact. These statements are much disputed though. Several sources note that of the 30 or so equestrian statues in Washington only 10 follow the supposed pattern. Several sources note that "The number of the horse's feet taken up from the ground has nothing to do with any attribute of the person depicted and everything to do with the skill of the sculptor and his ability to overcome nearly insurmountable problems in solid geometry, stress of materials, and other aspects of civil engineering . . . ."

Answer 3

It's supposed to be a code to tell you how the person on the horse died.
"At Gettysburg, a statue that has all four of the horse's hooves on the ground means that the rider survived the battle without a scratch. One foot raised means the person was wounded but survived, and both forelegs raised indicates that the man was killed at Gettysburg."

Answer 4

To breathe more life into the statue. Would look to boring if the horse was just standing ther doing nothing.

Answer 5

It's something like, one leg in the air fought in the war but died later, both legs in the air died a war hero or something... Urban Legends though I'm afraid.

Answer 6

It makes it look real and creative instead of just a horse standing on the ground. It doesn't look interesting if the horse is just standing on the ground.

Answer 7

It depends on what you mean by "wide open". If its just enough so that there's space around our tender nether region it is because we are trying not to hurt ourselves and to let our lower place air out, it can get rather unpleasant down there if it gets sweaty. On the other hand there are people who will just try to make themselves as comfortable even at others expense, of-course there's women like that too.

Answer 8

It has to do with the soldier's "death status" - 1 leg up > wounded in battle, 2 legs up > died in battle, all 4 legs down > soldier survived battle and retired

Answer 9

To give a sense of 'action',a horse standing still does not do that.

Answer 10

So why does Wellington sometimes have a Traffic Cone for a Hat.

Answer 11

The first guy is right. 1 = died of wounds, 2 = died in battle, and 4 = nothing - just dead.