Matilda

Matilda

About two years ago, my father-in-law bought three shetland ponies. He’s since broken the older two to pull a wagon, and they have a lot of fun carrying all sorts of small children around on their backs (or, at least, the small children have a lot of fun.) This is a portrait of Matilda, the youngest and greenest of those shetlands. 

When he got her, Matilda was a yearling, and hadn’t been handled very much. She was born with a lot of natural sass – as all Shetlands are – and had also developed a few bad habits. He spent a lot of time gentling her, and now she’s a quite well-behaved three-year-old.

In the early summer of 2019, Matilda was sold to a local lady who used to compete in driving. Matilda’s going to get trained to be a great little cart pony, and will probably have a wonderful life. Naturally, I had to paint the little sass basket.

As I was working on Matilda, I was also slowly doing a portrait of her mother, Molly, as well. Check out her page or scroll below to see pictures of the two finished pieces together.