George Stubbs “made his name painting horses in anatomically accurate detail and with psychological depth”, said Apollo magazine. His best-known work, “Whistlejacket” (c.1762) now hangs in the National Gallery, where it is one of the highlights of the collection.
A “commanding”, almost life-sized portrait of a rearing Arabian chestnut stallion that belonged to the second Marquess of Rockingham, it stands apart from most of the artist’s work in displaying its subject against an empty background, “rather than a rural idyll”.
Around the same time, Stubbs (1724-1806) painted another horse, Scrub, also on commission from Rockingham: the animal is depicted in a similar pose, but this time set against a landscape. The marquess, however, decided not to buy the painting, which belongs to a private collection and, before now, has only ever been on public display once. In this free one-room exhibition at the National Gallery, “Scrub” is paired with “Whistlejacket”, alongside a number of smaller paintings and drawings. It’s an event that demonstrates “Stubbs’ mastery of equine painting”.
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His art was based on close, painstaking study, said Laura Cumming in The Observer. In his early 30s, Stubbs spent 18 months “studying the anatomy of horses he had dissected”, sketching their “nostrils and limbs, depicting their muscles, arteries and pencil-sharp ankles”. That knowledge underpins both paintings, almost “like a form of homage” to the animals. Whistlejacket, famous for winning a 2,000-guinea race in 1759, seems to be ringed by a halo, with only faint traces of shadow around his two earth-bound hooves; he rises in “magnificent levade” without “rider, backdrop or saddle”, “a powerful, liberated force rising on hind legs”.
Whether the painting is unfinished – and if so, why – remains unclear, though there’s a “hoary old art story” that Whistlejacket tried to attack his own portrait because it looked so realistic – whereupon Rockingham told Stubbs to “put down his brushes”.
There is evidence that both horses were “originally supposed to have George III on their backs”, said Waldemar Januszczak in The Sunday Times – but that the marquess, a prominent Whig, fell out with the monarch, and George was thus “redacted”.
Whatever the truth, both works are “magnificent”. Seeing them together, though, “Scrub” strikes me as an even more impressive picture. Set against a landscape of “a misty English morning with a river flowing through it”, the horse has “a kingly demeanour” absent in the other portrait. He’s also “more accurately painted”, his “dark chestnut sides” bulging with muscles and veins.
The supporting pieces include some “spectacularly” precise horse drawings and several smaller paintings that show off Stubbs’ ability “to endow them with personalities”. It amounts to a small but “tasty display”.