Most of the race horses aren't shown racing, but instead are moving at a more stately pace in the Maryland Historical Society exhibit "The Voss Family: Artists of American Sporting Life." The loving detail usually associated with human portraiture is here applied to equine subjects that are as graceful as they are muscular.

The rural aristocracy often placed paintings of prize-winning horses next to paintings of illustrious family ancestors on the same lofty walls, a practice that seems like an advertisement for good breeding. It's such a distinctive culture that it may seem rather puzzling to those whose blood isn't blue and whose only time spent on a horse is on a merry-go-round.

In other words, not everybody will be attracted to this type of exhibit; however, the technical expertise in these paintings makes them of artistic as well as sporting interest. The horses are depicted with anatomical precision, and the accompanying riders and backing landscapes provide glimpses of pastoral life.

Several Voss family members have artwork in this exhibit, but the dominant figure is Franklin Brooke Voss (1880-1953). He applied his first-rate skills to such evocative subjects as "Mrs. Geraldyn Redmond on Calatrava" (1928), in which the horse and rider jump over a fence in a bucolic landscape.

That's a relatively animated scene, but there is complete stillness in the same artist's "Polo Ponies and a Terrier in a Pasture" (1925), in which five horses and a small dog pose as if they're meditating.

Franklin Voss also immortalized racing champions in such paintings as "Man O' War as a Two-Year-Old" (1919). That famous horse is depicted at the track at Belmont Park in New York when the careers of both the horse and the painter were just taking off. The grandstand at the left edge of this painting is densely populated by a stylish crowd in which absolutely everybody is wearing a hat.

Another famous horse is featured in Franklin Voss's "Seabiscuit, Red Pollard Up" (1937). The horse and rider are alone on the track, with a grassy infield and distant trees behind them. Seabiscuit's glistening skin and dignified stance make it clear this is a winner.

Hanging next to this painting is a framed front page from the Nov. 1, 1938, Baltimore Evening Sun in which the lead story breathlessly relates that day's race between Seabiscuit and War Admiral before a crowd of 40,000 people at Pimlico race track. These equine celebrities merited more newspaper space than other stories about things like the increasing Nazi threat in Europe.

Maryland factors into other paintings, too, because some members of the Voss family moved to Harford County in the 1930s. It's a rural legacy that endures -- and not just in these paintings.

"The Voss Family: Artists of American Sporting Life" runs through July 27 at the Maryland Historical Society, at 201 W. Monument St. in Baltimore. Call 410-685-3750 or go to www.mdhs.org.

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