’Stubbs fundamentally changed the approach to depicting the horse in late 18th-century British art, combining his hard-earned knowledge and understanding of their anatomy with a desire to capture a distinct individual character.’
(Dr Mary McMahon, Associate Curator)
George Stubbs (1724 to 1806)
George Stubbs was an eighteenth century English painter, best remembered for his paintings of horses. This small but beautifully formed exhibition in one room at the National Gallery is displaying one of his horse portrait masterpieces, the only life-size horse portrait by Stubbs still in a private collection, and so rarely seen in public. It’s of ‘Scrub, a bay horse belonging to the Marquess of Rockingham’, painted in about 1762, and it dominates the room.
Scrub, a bay horse belonging to the Marquess of Rockingham by George Stubbs (about 1762) © Private Collection. Photo: The National Gallery, London
What makes the exhibition interesting is that it places this wonderfully vivid image in the context of a few of Stubbs’s other horse paintings but, more interestingly, with half a dozen of his detailed and ground-breaking anatomical drawings of horses.
The Horkstow drawings
Stubbs was born in Liverpool, the son of a currier (leather worker) and he spent his early career in the north of England, painting portraits and developing his interest in anatomy. In the later 1740s he lived in York and supplied the illustrations for a treatise on midwifery. Following a brief visit to Rome in 1754 he returned to England the following year. In 1756, working in a remote barn in Horkstow, Lincolnshire, Stubbs spent 18 months carrying out meticulous dissections of horses. Stubbs carefully removed layers of skin and muscle, recording every detail as he went. It was the most thorough study of the anatomy of horses for over a hundred years and resulted in the greatest images of the subject ever recorded in Britain.
Finished study for ‘The First Anatomical Table of the Muscles, Fascias, Ligaments, Nerves, Arteries, Veins, Glands, and Cartilages of the Horse’ by George Stubbs (1756-1758) © Royal Academy of Arts, London
In 1759 Stubbs came down to London looking to further his career and bringing his drawings. But despite making influential contacts like Joshua Reynolds, Stubbs couldn’t get his drawings published. As a result he set out to teach himself how to make engravings. Over the next seven years he carefully converted his meticulous drawings to etchings and these were finally published in his major treatise, ‘The Anatomy of the Horse’ (1766).
The book was a contribution both to art and science and was an immediate success, translated into French and receiving praise across Europe.
The Anatomy Of The Horse
The exhibition includes a) a display case showing an original copy of Stubbs’s treatise whose full eighteenth century name was:
The Anatomy Of The Horse, (Including A particular Description of the Bones, Cartilages, Muscles, Fascias, Ligaments, Nerves, Arteries, Veins, and Glands. In Eighteen Tables, all done from Nature)
Alongside this are b) six of Stubbs’s original working drawings and finished studies. (I was interested to learn that the book and drawings are all on loan from the Royal Academy of Arts just up the road, which owns 42 surviving drawings.)
Display case showing the Royal Academy’s copy of ‘The Anatomy Of The Horse, (Including A particular Description of the Bones, Cartilages, Muscles, Fascias, Ligaments, Nerves, Arteries, Veins, and Glands. In Eighteen Tables, all done from Nature)’ by George Stubbs in Stubbs: Portrait of a Horse at the National Gallery (photo by the author)
Rockingham
Joshua Reynolds introduced Stubbs to his own roster of rich patrons and this included Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham (1730 to 1782). Rockingham was an eminent politician and served as Prime Minister from 1765 to 1766. He was also a keen collector of antique sculpture and active in horse breeding and horse racing and so commissioned the man who was emerging as the best horse painter in Britain.
Whistlejacket
Having processed the information in Room 1, visitors are recommended to walk a hundred yards through the Gallery to Room 34 where they can see probably Stubbs’s most famous masterpiece, Whistlejacket. The two equine portraits were painted in the same year for Rockingham, who owned them both.
Whistlejacket by George Stubbs (about 1762) as currently displayed in Room 34 of the National Gallery, London (photo by the author)
A retired racehorse, Whistlejacket was the second Marquess of Rockingham’s stud horse, used for breeding. Stubbs depicts the stallion on a scale more usual for a group portrait or historical painting. Whistlejacket rises in the levade position, a movement in dressage and featured in heroic equestrian portraiture.
The connection between the two portraits: George III
‘Whistlejacket’ was to be the basis for a commissioned portrait of George III (who had succeeded to the throne in October 1760) to hang in the Great Hall at Wentworth Woodhouse (as a pendant to an equestrian portrait of George II). Stubbs would to the horse and then other painters would paint in a) the royal rider and b) the rural background.
But once the portrait of Whistlejacket was completed, it was thought so striking that Rockingham (possibly with Stubbs) decided it should remain without a rider or background. So Rockingham then decided to have another picture painted for the king to be sitting on and Stubbs began a fresh painting with the bay colt Scrub as the subject.
But before Stubbs finished ‘Scrub’, Rockingham had resigned his post as Lord of the Bedchamber (1762) and decided not to buy it, apparently abandoning his plans for an equestrian portrait of the king.
And so Stubbs retained ‘Scrub’ for some twenty years, before finally selling it to William Wynne Ryland, a picture dealer, engraver and forger who tried – unsuccessfully – to have it sold in India. Damaged at sea, the painting was returned to Stubbs was sold in the studio sale after his death, and has remained in private hands ever since.
The horse alone
There had, of course, been tens of thousands of representations of horses in Western art, but nearly always being ridden by a human or taking part in human activities. Thus, in typical equestrian portraits, horses feature in a supporting role to the human figures, and this had been interpreted for centuries as depicting nature brought under the control of a skilful rider.
Stubbs’s importance as a painter of horses was not only that he introduced a new level of anatomical accuracy, but for the first time gave them a sense of individuality and character. Stubbs’ pictures are genuine portraits, of specific individual horses. This represented a radical shift in the representation of the horse and was an innovation that influenced all subsequent painters of horses.
Stubbs and Wright
This FREE exhibition makes a nice pendant or accompaniment to the ticketed exhibition just 50 yards away on the first floor of the National Gallery, which is devoted to the marvellous light paintings of Joseph Wright of Derby. Together they make up a deep dive into the art and culture of mid-eighteenth century England, and an insight into how closely aligned Science and Art were in that gentlemanly age.
Related links
- Stubbs: Portrait of a Horse continues in Room 1 of the National Gallery until 31 May 2026 (FREE)
- Wright of Derby: From the Shadows continues in the Sunley Rooms at the National Gallery until 10 May 2026 (admission price)
Books & Boots 