James Jean’s Year of the Horse: music, fire and a resting steed

James Jean’s Year of the Horse print was released on 17 February 2026 at US$525. The artist’s announcement specified a 24-hour sale beginning at 8 am Pacific Time, and the official store now marks it sold out. Created for Lunar New Year, the image brings a musician, her resting steed and a burning tree together in a richly detailed horizontal composition.

Music and fire in one landscape

The store’s account describes the musician playing a coral flute while a tree grows from the horse’s saddle and catches fire. A tortoise approaches, drawn toward the music and flames. Jean relates the fire horse to rapid and turbulent change, but the picture does not simply stage a charging animal. The horse lies folded beside the seated musician, making stillness the setting for the movement of the branching fire.

In the exact print image, red dominates the figures, flowers and flames, while dark turquoise passages sharpen the folds and patterned surfaces. The horse’s flower-crowned head rises behind the musician. Slender hanging lines connect the upper field to rounded ornaments below, giving the composition a measured vertical rhythm within its broad horizontal format. The flame shapes above the saddle seem to answer the curved folds around the musician, linking the landscape’s disturbance to the decorative language of the figures.

What distinguishes the edition

The print measures 25½ × 20¼ inches, with an image area of 23 × 17¼ inches. It is signed and numbered and uses full-image embossing with intricate foil detailing. Compared with the 18-inch-square image of Jean’s Horse IV, released in 2015, this broad image gives the reclining animal and musician more lateral space. The different image and paper dimensions also mean an existing Horse IV frame is not a ready match for this edition.

The surface treatment changes the comparison further. Horse IV combines a screen-printed iridescent background with two embossed chops; Year of the Horse extends embossing across the image and adds foil details. The earlier edition locates some of its physical emphasis in the background and identifying marks, while the 2026 work carries relief into the scene itself. Viewing angle and light therefore matter when assessing the newer print’s dense patterning, rather than just its colour reproduction.

Both prints used a 24-hour sale mechanism. Horse IV’s completed archive records a final edition of 672, whereas the current Year of the Horse page does not give a total. The store’s FAQ explains that timed editions are sized from orders during the sale window. For the 2026 print, neither Horse IV’s quantity nor the placeholder numbers in the promotional photograph answer that remaining edition-size question. The February release, its larger horizontal image and its full-image relief are the supported distinctions to carry into a comparison of the two horse-themed editions.