When the Horse Became Art

At the National Gallery in London, a remarkable exhibition brings back into focus one of the most enigmatic figures of eighteenth-century British painting, George Stubbs, exploring his quiet revolution in the depiction of the horse, an animal that, for the artist, became far more than a symbol of status or aristocratic refinement. At the heart of the exhibition is the monumental Scrub, a bay horse belonging to the Marquess of Rockingham (circa 1762), from a private collection and rarely seen by the public. Shown alongside the celebrated Whistlejacket from the museum’s permanent collection, the painting marks a decisive turning point: for the first time in British art, a horse is portrayed life-sized and without a rider, free from any narrative constraint. The exhibition highlights Stubbs’s method, developed between 1756 and 1758 when he withdrew to a barn in Lincolnshire to study equine anatomy through dissection and direct observation. From that research emerged a pictorial language where scientific precision merges with profound empathy for the subject, transforming each horse into an individual endowed with presence and personality. Alongside the large canvases are drawings, preparatory studies, and engravings that reveal the artist’s process of inquiry and discovery. The dialogue between works allows visitors to grasp the evolution of a new vision: from the animal as subordinate to the rider to the animal as an autonomous protagonist. In an era when the hierarchy of genres relegated animal painting to the margins, Stubbs succeeded in elevating it to an independent art form, combining scientific observation, classical grace, and modern spirit. The exhibition thus invites visitors to rediscover his gaze - precise, poetic, and radical - on one of the most powerful symbols of the relationship between humans and nature.