Photo By Gail

Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) was born and educated in England but lived most of her adult life in Mexico City. She was one of the last surviving participants in the Surrealist movement of the 1930s. At one point, Carrington was involved in a relationship with fellow surrealist Max Ernst, but the couple never married.

Here is a detailed description of Self-Portrait from Met Museum:

Sporting white jodhpurs and a wild mane of hair, Carrington is perched on the edge of a chair in this curious, dreamlike scene, with her hand outstretched toward the prancing hyena and her back to the tailless rocking horse flying behind her. The daughter of an English industrialist, Carrington spent her childhood on a country estate surrounded by animals and reading fairy tales and legends. She revisited these memories in her adulthood, creating paintings populated with real and imagined creatures. Here, the white horse, which Carrington used as her symbolic surrogate, gallops freely into the verdant landscape beyond the curtained window.

Leonora Carrington’s Self-Portait (1937) was Photographed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.