Whistlejacket
Whistlejacket | |
---|---|
Artist | George Stubbs (1724–1806) |
Year | c. 1762 |
Medium | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 292 cm × 246.4 cm (115 in × 97 in) |
Location | National Gallery, London |
Whistlejacket is an
Stubbs was a specialist equine artist who in 1762 was invited by Rockingham to spend "some months" at Wentworth Woodhouse in Yorkshire, his main country house. Stubbs had painted many horse portraits, with and without human figures, but the heroic scale and lack of background of Whistlejacket are "unprecedented" in his work and equine portraits in general and "contemporaries were so astonished that a single horse should command a huge canvas that legends quickly developed" explaining why the painting was unfinished, none of which seem plausible or supported by the evidence to modern art historians.[3] In fact Stubbs's earliest canvases on his visit in 1762 included a pair of much smaller paintings of groups of standing horses, one including Whistlejacket, in a horizontal format "like a classical frieze" with a similar honey beige background broken only by small shadows at the feet.[4] It would seem likely that leaving the portraits without the usual landscape background was Rockingham's idea.[5]
Stubbs depicts Whistlejacket rising to a
To a greater degree than any earlier painter, Stubbs produced genuinely individual portraits of specific horses, paying intimate attention to details of their form. Minute blemishes, veins, and the muscles flexing just below the surface of the skin are all visible and reproduced with great care and realism. Whistlejacket had already retired after a fairly successful racing career, but was painted in this unusual form to show "a supremely beautiful specimen of the pure-bred Arabian horse at its finest".[9]
Painting history
Stubbs's knowledge of equine physiology was unsurpassed by any painter; he had studied anatomy at York and, from 1756, he spent 18 months in Lincolnshire where he carried out dissections and experiments on dead horses to better understand the animal's physiology. He suspended the cadavers with block and tackle to better able sketch them in different positions. The careful notes and drawings he made during his studies were published in 1766 in The Anatomy of the Horse. Even before the publication of his book, Stubbs's dedication to his subject reaped him rewards: his drawings were recognized as more accurate than the work of other equine artists and commissions from aristocratic patrons quickly followed.
The Wentworth archives, "though unusually comprehensive, contain no clear reference to the commission to paint Whistlejacket", though some indication of the likely price comes from a receipt by Stubbs dated 30 December 1762 for "Eighty
According to a story in the biography of Stubbs by his friend and fellow-painter
When Wentworth was remodelled under a later
Legends as to the origin
One story was that Rockingham had intended to commission an equestrian portrait of
Another reason popularly given for it being "unfinished" is that Rockingham was so impressed by Whistlejacket's furious reaction when confronted by Stubbs working on the painting in his stable, that he ordered it hung without further decoration. Stubbs produced other paintings of horses against blank backgrounds for Rockingham, nothing in the painting indicates that it is not complete, and the detail of the shadows cast by Whistlejacket's rear legs on the ground suggest that this is how Stubbs intended the picture to be seen.
Horse history
Whistlejacket was a
He was beaten only four times in his racing career, but was notoriously temperamental and difficult to manage.[27] He was "averagely successful at stud", and must have died before Rockingham's death in 1782, as he is not listed in records of the subsequent sale of the stud; he would have been in his thirties if alive. He was not nearly as famous a horse as his sire and grand-sire, but is mentioned in Act IV of Oliver Goldsmith's classic comic play She Stoops to Conquer (1773) when an elopement is planned: "I have got you a pair of horses that will fly like Whistlejacket".[28]
Notes
- ^ George Stubbs, Painter, by Judy Egerton, The Independent, 25 November 2007.
- ^ Egerton (1998), 240
- ^ Egerton (1998), 245
- ^ Egerton (1998), 243–244; Landry, 157–158 (illustrated in both); they are 99 x 190.5/187 cm, recorded in Rockingham's accounts on 15 August 1762, at £195.5s for five paintings (Egerton). Both remain in the family, but were exhibited in the Stubbs exhibition shown at Tate Britain and the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool in 2006-7. The Mares and Foals illustrated below is not the one with Whistlejacket in it.
- ^ Egerton (1998), 243–244
- Prado
- ^ Jones
- ^ Landry, 149–150, 153–155, 156
- ^ Egerton (1998), 244–245
- ^ Egerton (1998), 242–243
- ^ Egerton (1998), 243
- ^ Egerton (1998), 242
- ^ Egerton (1998), 244
- ^ Egerton (1998), 246
- ^ Egerton (1998), 244
- ^ Landry, 152–153, giving Humphrey's account in full; Egerton does not mention the story
- ^ Egerton (1998), 246
- ^ Egerton (1998), 240
- ^ "Whistlejacket", and see linked floor plan.
- ^ Landry, 149
- ^ Egerton (1998), 242
- ^ Egerton (1998), 245; see also Landry, 157
- ^ Egerton (1998), 244–245
- ^ A major race run between 1634 and 1765, "A HISTORY OF THE KING'S AND QUEEN'S PLATES IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND, FROM 1634 TO 1765"
- ^ "Whistlejacket Pedigree and Race Record". Thoroughbred Bloodlines. Archived from the original on 11 March 2016. Retrieved 27 August 2018.
- ^ Egerton (1998), 244–245
- ^ Egerton (1998), 246
- ^ Egerton (1998), 244–245
References
- Egerton (1998): Egerton, Judy, National Gallery Catalogues (new series): The British School, 1998, ISBN 1857091701
- "George Stubbs". National Gallery. Retrieved 1 April 2010.
- Jones, Jonathan (22 April 2000). "Whistlejacket, George Stubbs (1762)". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 1 April 2010.
- Landry, Donna, Noble Brutes: How Eastern Horses Transformed English Culture, 2008, JHU Press, ISBN 0801890284, 9780801890284, google books
- "Whistlejacket". National Gallery. Retrieved 1 April 2010.
Further reading
- George Stubbs, painter: catalogue raisonné, Judy Egerton, Yale University Press, 2007, ISBN 0-300-12509-7