George Stubbs (1724–1806) made his name painting horses in anatomically accurate detail and with psychological depth. His best-known work is Whistlejacket (c. 1762), a commanding image of an Arabian chestnut stallion that belonged to the 2nd Marquess of Rockingham. It stands apart from most of Stubbs’s work by showing its riderless subject against a pale gold ground rather than in a rural idyll. Around the same time, and also for the marquess, Stubbs painted another rearing horse – a bay named Scrub, facing the other way to Whistlejacket and positioned on a riverbank under a blue sky. The Marquess, however, decided not to buy the painting. Now in a private collection, it has been on public display only once before and joins Whistlejacket at the National Gallery for a springtime display that celebrates Stubbs’s mastery of equine painting, born from close observation and the dissections he carried out himself (12 March–31 May).
Find out more from the National Gallery’s website.
Preview below | View Apollo’s Art Diary
