{"id":374234,"date":"2026-01-17T00:13:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T00:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/374234\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T00:13:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T00:13:10","slug":"is-stubbss-whistlejacket-experimental-or-just-unfinished","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/374234\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Stubbs\u2019s Whistlejacket experimental \u2014 or just unfinished?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whistlejacket may be the greatest depiction of an animal by a British artist, but is it an unfinished masterpiece?<\/p>\n

One of Britain\u2019s leading art historians has questioned the completeness of George Stubbs\u2019s 18th-century painting of the horse, which rears against a plain background.<\/p>\n

Bendor Grosvenor, author of The Invention of British Art, said he thought the painting was unfinished and that there was no conclusive evidence to \u201cexplain the mystery\u201d of Whistlejacket\u2019s missing background.<\/p>\n

Grosvenor said his study of Stubbs\u2019s brushwork, including his merging of background and subject in other equine paintings, had convinced him that the artist had been prevented by his patron, the Marquess of Rockingham, from finishing the work.<\/p>\n

Grosvenor said there was a determination in contemporary art circles \u201cto want everything in the past to be modern and striking\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact Whistlejacket is on this plain background makes it feel very modern, and we want to believe that Stubbs was bucking a trend and having a little experimentation,\u201d he said, but if his \u201cunderstanding of Stubbs\u2019s technique was correct\u201d then the artist had painted the horse first \u201cwith the intention of coming back to put the background in\u201d.<\/p>\n

From March 12, Whistlejacket will be joined in a National Gallery exhibition by Scrub, another life-sized painting of a horse by Stubbs that was also commissioned by the marquess and does have a landscape background.<\/p>\n

\"Oil<\/p>\n

Scrub<\/p>\n

THE NATIONAL GALLERY<\/p>\n

Both Scrub, showing a bay colt, and Whistlejacket, an Arabian chestnut stallion, are thought to have been painted by Stubbs in about 1762 and to be the first life-size portraits of horses without riders in British art.<\/p>\n

The National Gallery said its belief that both the marquess and \u201cpossibly\u201d Stubbs considered Whistlejacket finished was based on a 1797 memoir by a friend of the artist, recounting an incident in which the real Whistlejacket saw its near-finished portrait and tried to attack it. The marquess was \u201cso pleased with such proof of the excellence of the picture that he determined nothing more should be done\u201d.<\/p>\n

Stubbs and the marquess, who was prime minister for two terms and a renowned racehorse breeder, are known to have had a prickly relationship. Despite having commissioned Stubbs to paint Scrub, the marquess decided not to buy that artwork, and it remained in the artist\u2019s studio for 20 years. <\/p>\n

\u2022 Stubbs, Lowry or Turner: who painted Britain best?<\/a><\/p>\n

Scrub \u2014 titled in full Scrub, a bay horse belonging to the Marquess of Rockingham \u2014 will be on public display for only the second time when it is shown in a room near Whistlejacket at the National Gallery.<\/p>\n

It is thought that the marquess originally commissioned both Whistlejacket and Scrub as bases for portraits of George III, who was then to have been depicted atop the horses. It is speculated that he abandoned the plan after resigning from his post as lord of the bedchamber in 1762.<\/p>\n

Grosvenor, who first explained his theory on his podcast, Waldy and Bendy\u2019s Adventures in Art<\/a>, told The Times that Stubbs\u2019s landscapes were revolutionary, as were his animal depictions.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was the first person to really say the fidelity of the horse matters more than anything else and that is why he spent so many years literally peeling them back to the bone [through anatomical studies],\u201d he said. \u201cAnd because he is so interested in fidelity he is right up there in British art history as the first person to say: \u2018I am going to paint this landscape absolutely faithfully\u2019. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was at a time when aristocratic patrons wanted Italianate or Claudian pastiches. Stubbs liked to observe the reality of the landscape and I just feel that he would have wanted to situate Whistlejacket in some kind of setting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ozias Humphry\u2019s memoir recounts an incident when, according to the gallery, Stubbs was \u201cabout to finish the painting of the horse\u201d when the real Whistlejacket began to \u201cstare & look wildly at the picture, endeavouring to get at it, in order to attack it, the boy pulling him back & checking him\u201d.<\/p>\n

Humphry wrote: \u201cThe Marquis came shortly after to see what progress had been made, & learning the circumstance, was so pleased with such proof of the excellence of the picture that he determined nothing more should be done to it, tho\u2019 it was on the bare canvas without a back ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mary McMahon, the gallery\u2019s associate curator, said on Friday: \u201cThe anecdote may be exaggerated, particularly as it ties in to a tradition of stories about great artists producing a work so realistic it tricks the viewer. But it does record Humphry receiving information directly from Stubbs that the marquess had the final say on the finished painting, as one would expect for this time as the patron of the work.\u201d<\/p>\n

McMahon said there was no correspondence to \u201cfurther clarify how the decision was reached \u2026 but Stubbs had already produced two other works for the Marquess of Rockingham early in 1762 without a figurative background, suggesting this was a request particular to the patron.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Whistlejacket may be the greatest depiction of an animal by a British artist, but is it an unfinished…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-374234","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}