George Stubbs

George Stubbs, ARA (Liverpool 1724-1806 London) Labourers & Game Keepers (Lennox-Boyd 87, 88) Mezzotints, the pair, on laid, with wide margins, extensively hand coloured, published January 2nd and March 25th, 1790 respectively by Benjamin Beale Evans, engraved by Henry Birche, 440 x 650mm (17 1/4 x 25 1/2in)(PL) (2) (unframed)

GEORGE STUBBS A Lion Devouring a Horse. Soft-ground etching and engraving printed in dark brownish black on cream laid paper, before 1788. 250x335 mm; 9 3/4x13 1/4 inches, with narrow margins outside the image. An extremely scarce, unrecorded working proof in soft-ground etching and engraving only. We have found only 4 other impressions from the published state at auction in the past 25 years; this is the first proof before the roulette additions to be offered at auction in the past 25 years. Lennox-Boyd 71. Estimate $40,000-60,000

George Stubbs A.R.A. (Liverpool 1724-1806 London) A black and white spaniel following a scent, in a landscape with a lake and country house beyond signed and dated 'Geo:Stubbs pinxit 1777[?]' (lower right) oil on panel 23½ x 27 7/8 in. (59.7 x 70.6 cm.) with Knoedler, London and New York, 1928, from whom bought by S.A. Ellis Jr., New York. PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION R. Fountain and A. Gates, Stubbs' Dogs, London, 1984, p. 84, no. 4, illustrated fig. 52. J. Egerton, George Stubbs, Painter, London and New Haven, 2007, pp. 370-71, no. 170. Stubbs' brilliance in animal portraiture is far from limited to horses, and it is perhaps not surprising that dogs constitute a significant body of his work. The artist's working method is founded upon scientifically precise study of nature. Beyond this, though, he manages to convey the spirit and tension of his subject, who is crouched with head low on the scent. The addition of dogs to Stubbs's range of subjects from the mid-1760s contributed a lively and light-hearted note to his repertoire. Affection for one's own dog, whether a working dog or a pet, was common to all classes of British society, including 'the Great Commoner' and Earl of Chatham, William Pitt, who counted the companionship of a dog amongst 'the little-great pleasures of life'. Stubbs had already shown his gift for the close observation of hounds in details of The Charlton Hunt and The Grosvenor Hunt (Egerton, op. cit., nos. 11 and 29), and beginning in 1761 showed his portraits of dogs at the Society of Artists. The compact build of almost all of the various dogs painted by Stubbs presented compositional problems very different from those in painted horses, where he had filled the awkward space between their long legs with landscapes. Stubbs's dogs, much like this spaniel, fully occupy their space and dominate their settings. Stubbs repeated elements of the animal's pose and the picture's composition in portraits of two otherwise markedly different spaniels, with different backgrounds, in the 1770s: A black and white spaniel following a scent, dated 1773, in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, and A brown and white spaniel following a scent, dated 1777, in a British private collection (Egerton, op. cit., nos. 171 and 172). In this example, a copse of spindly trees on the right is dominated by one tall, Claudian tree. On the left, partly below the spaniel's shoulders, Stubbs offers a distant view of part of an unidentified four-storeyed building behind a winding river. Recorded by Fountain and Gates as well as Egerton as being dated 1771, microscopic examination suggests that the last digit is more likely to be a '7'. Given the spaniel's enigmatic expression and the alignment of the trees on the left hand side of the painting, both of which are similar to the later picture, this later date is highly likely.

George Stubbs, ARA (Liverpool 1724-1806London) The Harrower oil on canvas 72.4 x 91.5cm (28 1/2 x 36in). Footnote: PROVENANCE: M. Knoedler and Company, London, 1929, where purchased by thecurrent owner's father, and thence by descent LITERATURE: W. Shaw Sparrow, George Stubbs and Ben Marshall , vol. 2 ofthe series The Sport of our Fathers (London and New York,1929), ill. pp. 34-35. A very similar work by Stubbs, A Draught-horse pulling a harrow,driven by a farm labourer (oil on panel, 1786, 53.5 x 73.5 cm.)is recorded in Judy Egerton's catalogue raisonn�, George Stubbs,Painter (New Haven and London, 2007), pp. 478-479. The scene isnearly identical to the present work, presenting the same horse andlabourer against the same background, but exhibiting minorvariations: the labourer is viewed in three-quarter profile in The Harrower , but he appears in simple profile in ADraught-horse . The whip in The Harrower is clearlyvisible against a blue sky, but it appears somewhat lost againstthe foliage in A Draught-horse . Moreover, the actual harrowin The Harrower , while tethered to a similar chain, appearscocked on to a 45-degree angle behind the horse, while in ADraught-horse the harrow is presented at a similar angle butwith a more skilful portrayal of perspective, appearing to lie moreflat upon the ground. X-ray examination of The Harrower has revealed that Stubbsfirst painted the harrow at a slightly more oblique angle, but thenpainted over the device to portray it in what would appear to bemore understandable detail to the viewer. His final choice ofperspective for the device in The Harrower was arguably apoorer one in terms of draftsmanship, but was perhapsunderstandable if his desire was to present an image more easilycomprehended by those unfamiliar with the farm device.

Lot Description George Stubbs, A.R.A. (Liverpool 1724-1806 London) Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath, with a trainer, jockey and stablelad inscribed 'Gimcrack' (lower centre left) oil on canvas 40 3/16 x 76¼ in. (101.6 x 193.6 cm.) Special Notice On occasion, Christie’’’’s has a direct financial interest in lotsconsigned for sale, which may include guaranteeing a minimum priceor making an advance to the consignor that is secured solely byconsigned property. Christie’’’’s may choose to assume this financialrisk on its own or may contract with a third party for such thirdparty to assume all or part of this financial risk. When a thirdparty agrees to finance all or part of Christie’’’’s interest in alot, it takes on all or part of the risk of the lot not being sold,and will be remunerated in exchange for accepting this risk out ofChristie’’’’s revenues from the sale, whether or not the third partyis a successful bidder. The third party may bid for the lot and mayor may not have knowledge of the reserves. Where it does so, and isthe successful bidder, the remuneration may be netted against thefinal purchase price. If the lot is not sold, the third party mayincur a loss. Christie’’’’s guarantee of a minimum price for this lothas been fully financed through third parties Provenance Commissioned by Frederick St. John, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke(1734-1787), circa 1765. Frederick St. John, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke; Christie's, London,11 March 1780, lot 82 (27 gns. to the following) George St. John, later 3rd Viscount Bolingbroke, and by descentto Vernon Henry St. John, 6th Viscount Bolingbroke; Christie's,London, 10 December 1943, lot 48 (4,200 gns. to Ellis andSmith). Walter Hutchinson; Christie's, London, 20 July 1951, lot 122(12,000 gns. to the Woolavington Collection). Pre-Lot Text The Property of The Woolavington Collection Literature 70-71.lor, Stubbs, London, 1971, p. 43-5, pl. 32, details pls.30-1 and 35-6. C.A. Parker, Mr Stubbs the Horse Painter, London, 1971, p.109. V. Morrison, The Art of George Stubbs, London, 1989, pp. 57,70-71. J. Egerton, 'George Stubbs', The Dictionary of Art, ed. J. Turner,London 1996, XXIX, pp. 808-9. D. Oldrey, The Jockey Club Rooms, A Catalogue and History of theCollection, London, 2006, p. 22, under no. 72. J. Egerton, George Stubbs, Painter, New Haven and London, 2007, pp.226-27, no. 70. Exhibited London, Hutchinson House, National Gallery of British Sports andPastimes, 1948, no. 133. London, Royal Academy, European Masters of the Eighteenth Century,1954-5, no. 107. Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Toledo, British Painting in theEighteenth Century, 1957-58, no. 67. Richmond, Virginia, Museum of Fine Arts, Sport and the Horse, 1April-15 May 1960. London, Christie's, Bicentenary Exhibition, 1966. London, Tate Gallery, and New Haven, The Yale Center for BritishArt, George Stubbs, 1984-5, no. 55. Madrid, The Prado, Pinturas Britanicas, 1988-9, no. 19. London, Tate Gallery, In Celebration: The Art of the Country House,1998-99, no. 35. Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum,and London, The National Gallery, Stubbs & The Horse, 2004-05,no. 45. View Lot Notes › Painted circa 1765, and preserved in superb condition, Gimcrackon Newmarket Heath was commissioned by Frederick, 2nd ViscountBolingbroke, one of George Stubbs' most important patrons, and haslong been considered a supreme achievement of 18th century Britishpainting. In this canvas, a synthesis of advanced scientific study,precocious gifts of draughtsmanship and a profound sense ofhumanity, the artist created an image which was both immediatelyrelevant to his audience, and of transcendental beauty. Described by Basil Taylor - who with Judy Egerton did more than anyothers to re-establish Stubbs' reputation in the 20th century - as'one of his most beautiful pictures', the work is as epicentral toits epoch as any great masterpiece of Western Art. Here, on the'wide stage' of Newmarket Heath, Stubbs brings all his insight andinventiveness to bear on a scene the focus of which is a singularlypopular racehorse which, at that moment, had no equal. With theexception of the great Whistlejacket, acquired by the LondonNational Gallery through Christie's in 1997, no work by the artistof comparable importance has appeared on the market for more than ageneration. In many ways Stubbs embodied the values of the wide-rangingintellectual movement of the Enlightenment, or Age of Reason: hiswas the enquiring mind that demanded to know and understand throughobservation based on evidence and proof. Constantly pushingboundaries, throughout his life he was preoccupied withexperimental studies, yet this pursuit was always combined with adeep empathy for his subjects. An innate sense of nobility pervadeseach of the subjects in this work. In his day, Stubbs' pictures commanded prices on a par with thoseof other leading artists, yet money and commercial success do notappear to have been his guiding lights, and his output was notparticularly large. Nonetheless, the emergence of his talent onarrival in London in 1759 was well timed. Taylor describedeloquently that world when he wrote: ' not only field sports but the more informal conditions andpleasures of rural society had become so important in thelife-style of the landed classes that the opportunity had emergedfor the development of a distinctive iconography. The great era ofcountry-house building was reaching its climax, and many foreignvisitors to England in the eighteenth century were impressed by theattachment to country life they discovered here among moneyed andsophisticated people. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuriesthe portrait had uniquely served the interests of family, rank andambition. A different form of art with a wider range of subjectcould confer a similar honour upon the whole scope of materialproperty and the social returns it provided; English painting inthe first half of the century provides abundant evidence of itsoutgrowth. In the 1760s Stubbs was to be the most talented,responsive and versatile interpreter of such an iconography ofrural life; his work should be seen in this context and notregarded - as it has been formerly - as one unusually refined anddistinguished manifestation of sporting art.' (B. Taylor, Stubbs,London, 1971, p. 12). George Stubbs: the emergence of his genius Born in Liverpool in 1724, Stubbs would have immediately come intocontact with animals (or at least carcasses) through his father'strade as a currier and leatherseller. He drew from an early age,teaching himself to work in oil, and by the early 1740s waspainting professionally, his principal subject-matter beingportraits. He moved to York in 1745 and was based in Yorkshire,painting, studying and teaching anatomy, and teaching drawing andperspective, until 1753. After a brief visit to Rome in the springof 1754, he settled back in Liverpool for about two years. The years between 1756 and 1758, when Stubbs was working atHorkstow, a hamlet near Hull in North Lincolnshire, on his Anatomyof the Horse project, are often seen as the crucible period fromwhich he emerged a genius. Yet anatomy had long been a subject ofintense study for the artist, from his youth in Liverpool, to Yorkwhere, based at the County Hospital, he had drawn and engravedillustrations for Dr John Burton's An Essay towards a Complete NewSystem of Midwifery (see fig. X). Nonetheless, his time at Horkstowunquestionably established a new focus, a new dedication, in whichhe took his work in this field to a different level. Assisted onlyby his common-law wife, Mary Spencer, 'so ardent was his thirst foracquiring experience by practical dissection,' wrote Ozias Humphry,his friend and fellow artist in his manuscript memoir of Stubbs,'that he frequently braved those dangers from the putridity,&c. which would have appalled the most experiencedpractitioner'. Probably dating from these years is the smallself-portrait on copper (Yale Center for British Art, fig X)showing a 'strong and resolute man' (Egerton), much the earliestimage of the artist so far known, the next in date being OziasHumphry's fine chalk drawing dated 1777 (Private Collection, fig.X). Forty-two of Stubbs' drawings, of immense precision and beauty,from the Horkstow project survive (London, Royal Academy of Arts,see figs X and X), of which eighteen are highly finished works madeto be engraved for publication. Armed with these, Stubbs moved toLondon in 1758 or early 1759, and quickly caught the eye of suchimportant aristocrats as the 3rd Duke of Richmond and the 2ndMarquess of Rockingham, 'who' in Stubbs' words, 'delight in horses,and who either breed or keep any considerable number of them'(cited from the introduction to The Anatomy of the Horse).Commissions quickly followed (see section on Lord Bolingbroke'spatronage later in this entry), yet establishing himself as themost sought-after painter of horses of the day did not fulfilStubbs' ambition. Taylor described a man who, by 1760, was 'ready with an abundanceof pictorial ideas; in scope and productiveness this was the mostfecund period of his life.' The 1760s bore witness to the range andoriginality of his work, 'the undeniable fact established by thepictorial evidence that he was the most versatile and exploratorypainter of the time'. By the close of 1762 Stubbs had painted his magisterial GrosvenorHunt (Private Collection, Egerton, no. 29), and several of his bestpictures for Lord Rockingham, including the sublime Whistlejacket(London, National Gallery, Egerton no. 34, fig. X). In works suchas these, Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath, and his series of Mares andFoals pictures, Stubbs showed how spectacularly he had advanced thefield in which he worked, for these are essentially the animals tobe found in the work of Gericault or Degas (fig. X). As Taylorobserved, 'His power to express the identity of the individualcreature in a manner which was artistically so original wascertainly the reason for his immediate success. [His portraits] hada nobility of form which would even then have been associated witha more elevated historical style. This was only a part of hiscurrent originality, for Stubbs abolished the conventionalaccessories which [his forbears] had crudely transferred Thelandscape and accompanying figures also had a new distinction andtruth.' (B. Taylor, Stubbs, London, 1971, p. 26). Lord Bolingbroke's patronage of Stubbs After Stubbs settled in London in 1758 or early the following year,he seems to have been brought to the notice of the leading Englishportraitist of the day, Joshua Reynolds, who may have consulted himabout the charger in his ambitious portrait of Lord Ligonier (FortLigonier, Pennsylvania). Judy Egerton has argued that it was toReynolds that Stubbs owed his introduction to an influential andrich group of patrons, all of whom had been painted by the formerin 1758-60, and who also all belonged to the newly-founded JockeyClub. Among these was Frederick St. John, who while still a minorhad in 1749 succeeded his father as 3rd Viscount St. John andinherited the recently rebuilt house at Lydiard Tregoze inWiltshire, and two years later, on the death of his father's elderhalf-brother, Henry, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, the statesman andphilosopher, became 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke, that peerage of 1712taking precedence of the 1716 St. John creation. Bolingbroke had in1757 married Lady Diana Spencer, sister of Charles, 4th Duke ofMarlborough, who like their first cousin, John, 1st Earl Spencerwas also to become a patron of Stubbs. Lord Chesterfield, who prided himself on his understanding ofothers, wrote of Bolingbroke as being of 'true and solid goodsense, real taste and knowing a good deal'. Whether it showed solidgood sense to sell his considerable inheritance at Battersea to hiscousin by marriage, Lord Spencer, in 1763 is open to doubt, but inhis championship of Stubbs, Bolingbroke did indeed show 'realtaste'. His main interests were in racing and gambling. Known tohis numerous friends at his London clubs of Brooks's and White's as'Bully', he drank enough to be noticed even in a time of heavyindulgence. He was an impossible husband, perhaps made the more soby the evident intelligence of his wife, who after their divorce in1769 married Topham Beauclerc and is still remembered for thedrawings of which Horace Walpole had so high an opinion. It may notbe altogether coincidental that another prominent member of theJockey Club who patronised Stubbs at the same time as Bolingbroke,and may indeed have encountered him on his Grand Tour, AugustusFitzroy, 3rd Duke of Grafton, was also involved in a spectaculardivorce in the same year, and that both men refrained from suingthe lovers of their wives for financial damages as they knew thatevidence of infidelity could be brought against themselves: the twodivorces, each of which required an act of parliament, causedconsiderable scandal and led the king, George III, to advocatealtering the law to make it more difficult for errant wives toremarry. Bolingbroke himself found consolation elsewhere, not leastwith the courtesan Polly Jones, as we only know because she wasrobbed at his door. Bolingbroke's intemperance was inherited by hisson, who in 1789 deserted the heiress he had married in 1761 andeloped with his mother's daughter by his stepfather. It was notuntil after his first wife's death that in 1804 he was able tomarry again, significantly perhaps selecting a foreign bride,Baroness Hompesch. Whatever his defects as a husband, the 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke wasan inspired patron to Stubbs. As Judy Egerton suggests the Maresand Foals he commissioned (Egerton, no. 17) may be the earliest ofthe painter's treatments of the subject. The six horses are shownin what is presumably the park at Lydiard, with the river in themiddle distance. The canvas must have been seen by other patrons inBolingbroke's circle: Lord Rockingham, whose great house WentworthWoodhouse was on an altogether different scale than Lydiard, not tobe outdone, ordered a frieze of seven horses, which was paid for in1762; the Duke of Grafton evidently commissioned a group of fivewhich was exhibited in 1764; Lord Midleton commissioned another,based in part on the Rockingham group and thus evidently notintended to represent his own stud (the link here may have beenWilliam Chambers, the architect of Peper Harow, whom the painterhad met in Rome); Lord Grosvenor a sublime group, again of fivehorses, including two foals; a group of five in the Duke ofCumberland's stud was exhibited in 1765; and a further group offive supplied to Col. The Hon. George Lane Parker was engraved in1768, and subsequently recapitulated, with a different background,very probably for the Duke of Grafton (Egerton, nos.30, 42, 62, 63,64, 88 and 89). Bolingbroke must have helped to set the fashion forpictures of the kind. It is revealing of the links between Stubbs'patrons that a full-length portrait of Rockingham and a reducedversion of the Reynolds of the Duke of Cumberland were at LydiardTregoze until the 1943 sale. Eventually financial embarrassments caught up with Bolingbroke,whose failure to secure a bill for enclosing land on Sedgemoor wasno doubt a disastrous reverse. His reason was affected, and byearly 1780 he was in a 'mad house' for palsey of the brain. Thoseresponsible for his affairs sent three pictures by Stubbs and,rather surprisingly a Deposition given to Perugino with a few otherold masters to James Christie. The 'Brood mares and foals' and 'Aportrait of the famous Gimcrack, with a view of Newmarket course'were sold on 11 March 1780, as lots 81 and 82. Bolingbroke's elderson, George St. John, later 3rd Viscount Bolingbroke (1761-1814),bought each lot for 27 guineas and the pictures thus returned toLydiard Tregoze, to remain there until 1943. Bolingbroke was also among the first patrons to order portraits ofindividual racehorses from Stubbs. The sequence culminates inGimcrack, but the pictures were not conceived in any sense as aseries. What may have been the earliest, A bay mare belonging toLord Bolingbroke with Lydiard Hall in the background (Egerton, no.19, dated c. 1762-4), roughly square and perhaps conceived as anovermantle, remained at Lydiard until the 1943 sale. But the smallLord Bolingbroke's young bay colt , now identified as Hollyhock(Royal Collection, Egerton, no. 20) was given by the viscount toJean-Louis Monnet in 1766, presumably in the hope of finding aFrench buyer for the horse, rather in the way that dealers andcollectors of the time arranged to have pictures and drawingsengraved for what we would term advertising purposes. Thebackground in that picture was painted in France by Vernet andBoucher, which suggests that it was like that of three, andpossibly a fourth, of the Rockingham canvasses originally leftblank, quite possibly so that this could be filled in to suit thetaste of the anticipated buyer for the horse. By contrast Bolingbroke may have kept Lustre held by a groom (Yale,Egerton, no. 26, c. 1762, fig X), as this is probably the 'Portraitof a horse and groom' which was bought back at Christie's, 10 March1780, as lot 70, for 5 guineas by George St. John, but subsequentlyleft the collection. Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath cannot have beenbegun before the early summer of 1765 when Bolingbroke purchasedthe horse from William Wildman, and there must be a case forproposing that this exceptional composition followed the lessambitious and more conventional portrait of the horse supplied toWildman, which was engraved in 1766 (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum,Egerton, no. 71, c. 1765, fig. X). That Bolingbroke promptly sold the horse to the French owner andpicture collector, the Comte de Lauraguais (to whom he may havehoped to sell Hollyhock ), exemplifies his quixotic behaviour. Thecount himself was soon in embarrassed circumstances: Gimcrack hadbeen passed on by 1768 to another intimate of Bolingbroke, SirCharles Bunbury, and Lauraguais' pictures were sold by JamesChristie on 27 February 1772, Bolingbroke's friend Lord Carlislebuying Poussin's Inspiration of the Poet (Louvre) and Guercino'sTancred and Erminia (Edinburgh). Significantly, the WildmanGimcrack is identical in composition with Turf with Jockey up, atNewmarket (Yale, Egerton, no. 72, c. 1766), which remained atLydiard until 1943: Bolingbroke owned this horse by 1764, and in1766 it beat King Herod at Newmarket, an event which Egertonsuggests that the picture 'probably commemorates': Turf was lamedin 1767 and as a result retired. While in no sense a pendant to theearlier portrait of Lustre, the picture is of the same standard'half-bishop' portrait size (50 by 40 inches, placedhorizontally). One other known picture by Stubbs may hypothetically be associatedwith Lord Bolingbroke, A red and white dog in a landscape(Christie's, 22 November 2006, lot 54; Egerton, no.168, c. 1775),first recorded in 1885 when it was lent to an exhibition by a MissSt. John, hypothetically either Mary Caroline, granddaughter ofBolingbroke's second son General the Hon. Frederick St. John, herfirst cousin Arabella Cecilia Frances (d. 1894), or one of the twounmarried daughters of the 3rd Viscount by his second marriage,Isabella or Antonia Gimcrack Gimcrack rose from relatively obscure origins to become one of themost successful, and possibly the most popular, racehorse of the18th century. Bred by Gideon Elliot in Hampshire, far from the traditionalsources of the best horses in Yorkshire, he was got by Cripple, ason of the Godolphin Arabian (see lot XX), out of Miss Elliott, andfoaled in 1760. In 1764 he began by winning all his seven racesdespite being very small at fourteen hands tall. Sold to WilliamWildman, later owner of the great Eclipse, in 1765 Gimcrack'sNewmarket career began with another victory, and he was immediatelysold on for 1,500 guineas to Lord Bolingbroke. The horse recovered250 guineas when his opponent withdrew from a match later that weekand then won further matches of 1,000 guineas each against Rocketand Ascham. To general amazement, notwithstanding the fact thatGimcrack was carrying an extra 7lbs, the small horse's sequence often wins came to an abrupt halt when he was beaten by LordRockingham's Bay Malton in early October despite being favourite at4-to-1 on. After a final 500 guineas match the same month hadrecouped some of Bolingbroke's losses, the horse was sold to CountLauraguais and taken to France for over a year. The scene in the background of the picture shows Gimcrack inBolingbroke's black colours ridden John Pratt, almost the bestjockey of the day, winning by some distance from three opponentswhose colours suggest they belonged to Richard Vernon and LordGrosvenor. That it is a trial rather than a race is shown by thefact that the shutters on the King's Stand have been swung up intoplace to block the unglazed windows, as well as by the absence ofany officials or spectators. There are numerous pictures by lesserartists showing the shutters hanging down below the windows withexcited crowds watching proceedings from the upper floor or groupedaround the judge's box to the left. However each of the severaldepictions by Stubbs of the stand shows closed shutters, and onlyin this picture is there more than the figure of a single horse onview. The trial depicted probably took place in late May or June 1765,before Gimcrack's great meeting with Ascham on 10 July. The chesnuthorse in second place in Richard Vernon's white silks is probablyCheshire Dick, which that owner had just bought from LordGrosvenor, while Grosvenor's bay in third is likely to be Boreaswith his grey Cardinal Puff almost certainly bringing up the rearas he was the only grey he raced that season. Not only had Gimcrackhimself run at the last Newmarket meeting in early May, butCardinal Puff (then Jenison Shafto's but promptly sold toGrosvenor), Cheshire Dick and Boreas had between them won four ofthe eighteen races run that week. Rather less plausibly the Vernonchesnut might be Africus who had won twice at the first Newmarketmeetings that year but had not run since, or Prophet, alreadysecond to Gimcrack when he had belonged to Wildman in April. With such good form these horses provided ideal opposition in thetrial for Gimcrack's match with Ascham, where the 1,000 guineasstake was only a fraction of what was eventually involved. Indeedthe match provoked something of a public furore due to the amountsbet being so large that it stirred up an outcry against thepropriety of events at Newmarket in general. With such sums atstake all those involved would have been very keen to test thestrength of their champions - no doubt Ascham, who had yet to racein 1765, was similarly tried on another day. At this period the Jockey Club ordained that notice needed to begiven of a trial of this sort if it involved horses belonging tomore than one owner. Once the time and place of the trial wereregistered it was an offence for any outsider to watch proceedingsso that any tout would have had to be in hiding, perhaps behind thehedge bordering the Cambridge Road in the distance. The closed gateby the stand was the route giving access to the Heath for thecarriages of those with the right to bring them onto the sacredturf on racedays. In the foreground Gimcrack is being 'wisped' by a lad as part ofthe process of drying him off after the trial. One can surmise fromthe saddle under Pratt's arm that the little horse may have beencarrying a considerable amount of weight, as indeed would beexpected in the circumstances. In later life Pratt also excelled asa trainer, principally for Lord Grosvenor, winning no less thanfour Derbys and seven Oaks; indeed this total of eleven classicswas never exceeded by anyone who trained in the days before the2,000 and 1,000 Guineas were initiated early in the 19th century,thereby widening the scope for producing classic winners. No doubtthe man holding Gimcrack is his trainer, but no record seems tohave survived of his name. The absence of the three owners may beexplained by the usual practice, which was also adopted for realraces, of following up the horses on good class hacks as they cameup the final five furlongs of the Beacon from the Rowley Mile tothe finish. Returned from France in 1767, the following year Gimcrack was soldto Sir Charles Bunbury, the new steward of the Jockey Club, aposition he shared in 1770 with Bolingbroke and Shafto - it was asmall world. Gimcrack seems to have been rejuvenated by his trainerafter rather losing his form following the French expedition,however for his last two years in training the horse was soldagain, this time to Lord Grosvenor, winning his final race in April1771 before transfer to Grosvenor's stud near Newmarket. In thatlast race he put his former owner Sir Charles Bunbury firmly in hisplace by overturning the latter's good horse Bellario, who was2-to-1 on in a field of nine. In all Gimcrack's eight year careerhe won twenty-five of his thirty-five races in England, and hisFrench owner won a bet when he covered 22 miles in an hour. Givenhis relatively undistinguished pedigree and pony size it is perhapsnot surprising that he was not a great success as a stallion.Eventually Grosvenor sold him again, this time for only 38 guineasin 1780, and thereafter trace of him is lost. On 10 July 1765, the day of Gimcrack's famous match with Ascham,Lady Sarah Bunbury went to Newmarket 'to see the sweetest littlehorse run that ever was; his name is Gimcrack, he is delightful'.Hugely successful, the combination of his long career, courage,size, colour and rather unlikely background were to result in analmost unrivalled popularity. This in turn led to the formation ofthe Gimcrack Club, York, celebrating his memory with its annualdinner, and the horse's memorial race at York, with the result thathis fame survives after two hundred and fifty years. He is the onlyhorse to figure in five works in the Stubbs canon - even Eclipsemanaged only four appearances. The genesis of the picture Stubbs' first portrait of Gimcrack is presumably that now in theFitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (fig. X) commissioned by WilliamWildman, like Bolingbroke both an important patron of Stubbs andonly briefly the owner of Gimcrack. Probably painted earlier thesame year as Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath with a trainer, a jockeyand a stable lad, the jockey in both pictures is John Pratt,although in the Fitzwilliam picture he wears Wildman's colours ofred jacket and black cap. The Wildman picture was believed to havebeen painted to commemorate Gimcrack's first major win atNewmarket, over the Round Course for a 50 plate on 9 April1765. Presumably pre-dating both of these works are two small Newmarketlandscape studies (figs. X and X), which together form a uniqueelement in Stubbs' oeuvre as the only pure landscape studies tosurvive. Egerton describes Stubbs' recognition of the 'iconicsignificance of these essentially simple buildings' in 'these twosmall, highly charged paintings', which 'testified, silently andpermanently to victories won and contests endured, in a way thatthe presence of momentarily excited spectators - an aspect ofracing that seems to have repelled Stubbs - never did. Stubbs'focus on these inglorious Newmarket landmarks was a masterstroke inestablishing the genius loci.' Kept in his studio, he referred back to them for the rest of hiscareer; the work now in the Tate is clearly of fundamental importto the two greatest racing pictures the artist painted: Gimcrack onNewmarket Heath and his monumental Hambletonian, rubbing downexhibited thirty-five years later in 1800 (Mount Stewart, TheNational Trust, fig. X). Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath is powerful testimony to both theoriginality and ambition brimming in Stubbs in these years. On acanvas marginally wider than that on which he painted LordBolingbroke's Mares and Foals , the artist created 'he most finelydesigned of all his Newmarket scenes' (Egerton). Taylor sees that,'balancing realism and abstraction, the painting's open, apparentlyloose, structure conceals the composition's formality and the exactplacing of its parts, while the vital realism of the horse and menobscures the essential artificiality of Stubbs' pictorial idea.' 'the group which comprises the horse, trainer and stable ladsilhouetted against the building and forming one distinct part ofthe image is contained within a rectangle formed by the painting'svertical dimension and a line which is the golden section of thecanvas' length.' The device of showing two scenes in one picture is unique inStubbs' oeuvre. Clearly aware of its use by artists of a generationearlier such as Wootton and Seymour, Stubbs employs the spaceafforded by his wide canvas with 'an astonishing disregard forconvention' (Egerton), placing the principal portrait of thesubject on the far left hand side of the composition, with one ofhis triumphs set as a backcloth in defiance of the rules of timeand space. So widely revered as a portraitist of animals, Stubbs' genius forcapturing likenesses of people - particularly, one might feel, of'the common man' - is shown superbly. The character and humanity ineach of the figures is palpable, the detail applied with thetechnical accomplishment of a miniaturist. A second version of Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath belonged toRichard, 1st Earl Grosvenor, probably the richest man in England,and may well have been commissioned in or soon after 1769 when hebought Gimcrack. Alternatively it may be that Grosvenor, as keen agambler as Bolingbroke, had something of a coup in return for hiscontribution to the trial shown in the background of the picture,and therefore wanted to commemorate the event. Sold by his son, the2nd Earl, in 1812, that picture eventually passed to the great 19thcentury racing figure Admiral Rous, who left it to the Jockey Clubin whose rooms at Newmarket it still hangs. Stubbs' third and final portrait of Gimcrack was commissioned byLord Grosvenor after the horse had been retired to stud (?1770,Private Collection, fig X). His coat by now almost white, he isshown held by a stud hand in Grosvenor's yellow livery at Oxcroft,Cambridgeshire; a second version of the picture was painted by theartist twenty years later for the Turf Gallery (PrivateCollection). Newmarket and 'The Sport of Kings' Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath probably gives a better insight intothe nature of racing at Newmarket, and its renaissance after aserious setback in the middle of the 18th century, than any other.That this should be so is all the more remarkable for the scenedepicted by Stubbs being in fact not a race but rather a trial andincluding only one identifiable person. Newmarket's history in racing terms began soon after King James Ifirst visited the town in February 1605 to course hare on theHeath. He returned often and racing soon became part of theitinerary of such visits. The Long Course, the earliest course ofwhich we know anything, ended near the site of the building in thebackground of this picture, although the stand we see is a lateraddition, almost certainly dating to the reign of King Charles II.Known as the King's Stand, both it and the stables in theforeground, called the King's Stables or simply the Rubbing House,appear regularly in pictures by Wootton and others executed in theearly 18th century, and survived well into the 19th century. By the time King Charles I succeeded in 1625, racing was replacinghunting and hawking as the principal reason for the Court to decampen masse from Whitehall to rural Suffolk at regular intervals.Under the Commonwealth, however, racing was prohibited for fear ofits meetings giving cover for insurrection. From the time of King Charles II's first visit to Newmarket in1665, racing prospered as never before and high class sport becameincreasingly central on the Heath. Whilst most of the horses racedwere bred in Yorkshire, the backing of the court guaranteed thatNewmarket Heath joined York as the main stages on which they weretested. The King not only owned horses but sometimes rode themhimself, with a fair measure of success. Long before the accession of King George I in 1714, the main coursenow known as the Beacon had been reduced in distance to only thefinal four miles of the original eight mile Long Course. As theyears passed the benign indifference of the early Hanoverians sawthe steady decline of racing both generally and at Newmarket inparticular. By 1750 that decline saw less than 10 of the sport inEngland, by numbers of races or prize money, decided on the Heath.However, the establishment of the Jockey Club, probably in 1750,radically improved the governance and organisation of racing atNewmarket (two of the shrewdest operators involved in itsfoundation, Richard Vernon and Jenison Shafto, are quite by chancelinked to this picture through the beaten horses behind Gimcrack).Within ten years of its foundation the Jockey Club was in completecontrol of racing at Newmarket and the scale and quality of thesport on offer was revolutionised. From under 10 per cent in 1750,by the time that Gimcrack eventually retired to stud in 1771, theHeath saw some 35 per cent of all the races run each year inEngland and about 70 per cent of the total national prize fund,despite the fact that activities elsewhere had doubled over thatfruitful period of the sport's history. The place had become amagnet for those in the fashionable world who could afford to cut adash and also for a good many who couldn't but tried anyway; someof the financial crashes traceable to activities on the Heath werespectacular. Horace Walpole declared that 'half the nobility andhalf the money of England went to Newmarket' and, speaking of theDuke of Cumberland, George III's uncle, who in 1765 was gravelyill, reported that he 'has ordered his equipages for Newmarket, andpersists in going there if he is still alive'. The picture's 20th century history Offered for sale at Christie's in 1943 by Lord Bolingbroke'sdescendant, Vernon, 6th Viscount Bolingbroke, the picture wasbought by Walter Hutchinson, founder of the National Gallery ofBritish Sports and Pastimes. A publisher and printer, Hutchinsonformed a remarkable collection of British and sporting pictureswhich were dispersed in a sale at Christie's in 1951. This includedno fewer than twelve works by Stubbs although Gimcrack on NewmarketHeath was unquestionably the most important example, and sold forthe exceptional sum of 12,000 guineas. In 1951 the picture entered the Woolavington Collection, the coreof which was formed at the end of the 19th and beginning of the20th centuries by Sir James Buchanan, Bt., afterwards LordWoolavington, a philanthropist and successful racehorse owner whohad made his fortune in the whisky industry. Originally assembledat Lavington Park in Sussex, the collection later moved withWoolavington's descendants to Cottesbrooke Hall inNorthamptonshire. One of the finest collections of sporting art inthe world, it includes other pictures by Stubbs, as well asexceptional works by Marshall, Ferneley, Herring andMunnings. We are very grateful to Judy Egerton, whose extensive work onStubbs has been much drawn upon in this entry, and to David Oldreyfor sharing with us his unrivalled knowledge of racinghistory