A Palette Knife Painting of the Horsemen Guardians of the Spanish Bulls in the Camargue

A Palette Knife Painting of the Horsemen Guardians of the Spanish Bulls in the Camargue

Horsemen Guardians of the Spanish Bulls in the French Camargue

The half-wild horses looked up from their grazing, snorted, then pranced and galloped several feet away. They hesitated, glancing at the horse and rider, and continued with a watchful eye over their shoulders. The fierce noonday sun was relentless, scorching the land, laying waste to it from late spring to early autumn. In the winter, the cold winds of the mistral sweep down from the north, freezing the lands, but the horses still run wild.

To the right, in the distance, six black, long-horned bulls grazed on the muddy flats, seemingly unconcerned about the horses or the rider. The man urged his own dappled white horse slowly forward. As he approached the bulls, he lowered his ten-foot prong, prodding the cattle, driving them closer to the rest of the herd.

Horsemen Guardians of the Spanish Bulls in the French Camargue The man was a gardian of Provence, in the southwestern part of France, one of the cowboys of the Camargue, who herd horses, cattle and sheep on more than 340,000 acres of marshland, not unlike the bayous of Louisiana, in the United States. The area, some 120 miles west of Nice, is loosely framed by two branches of the Rivière Rhône, the Grand et Petit Rhône. For hundreds of years, it was detested by French farmers because of the high salt content and root-destroying muck. Not to mention the swarming flies and mosquitos. The searing heat of summer, and the bitter winters caused by the mistral.