From there, we roamed each and every room, and I found myself awash in a sea of antiquity; cherubs flying and angels playing harps and statues of naked women with no arms. It was all beautiful, and I could see how amazingly clever the artists must have been to paint them or carve them out of marble, you know, all of that, but even though I could see the works were important, none of them truly connected with me. Until I came into a room of nineteenth-century art. Here, one wall of the room was taken up by a massive painting, almost half the length of the gallery wall. The painting drew me to it and I stood in front of it and felt dwarfed by its size and power.

It was a painting of horses. There were almost a dozen of them in the image, a wild herd, all of them grey. In the foreground there was a cluster of mares, some with young foals at foot, and behind them were the stallions standing guard over the rest, gazing imperiously to the horizon where the coastline was battered by the wild, roiling grey-blue waves of the ocean. This was a desolate and remote landscape where the surf was rough, the skies were darkened and stormy and the tempestuous weather was clearly maddening for the horses. Some of them were fighting against the wild weather, shaking their heads and flinging their manes. Two young colts to the far left of the frame were engaged in a fight, rearing up on their hinds legs, although it looked like their battle was nothing more than play to let off a little steam.

The real focus of the artwork, though, was at the centre of the painting. A proud and stoic grey mare, who weathered the storm that was raging about her and focused her gaze on the young colt that was at her flank. He looked so newborn that his legs could barely hold him up. He was vulnerable and precious, as if all the things that were pure and good in the world belonged in that one moment just to him. And the painting itself – it was remarkable. It was both real and magical at the same time. The technique was so flawless it could almost have been a photograph, and yet at the same time there was so much of the artist’s heart and soul on display. It moved me in a way no art, not even the mighty Whistlejacket, had ever done before.