See the works of the master of horse painting, George Stubbs
Step into the world of George Stubbs, the visionary British painter. Marvel at his monumental portrait of a rearing racehorse, ‘Scrub’.
In the 1750s, Stubbs spent 18 months in a remote barn in Horkstow, Lincolnshire. Hidden away, he devoted his time to studying and drawing the anatomy of horses. What resulted was the most thorough study on the subject for almost a hundred years.
Incredibly, Stubbs’s pictures of horses are still some of the most accurate ever painted, all while capturing their unique characters.
In this exhibition, you’ll meet one of these horses, Scrub. Painted by Stubbs around 1762, we see Scrub rearing in a landscape backdrop — notably without a rider.
In a nearby room is another monumental horse painting by Stubbs, this time of Scrub’s now famous contemporary, ‘Whistlejacket’. Painted around the same time, they would be the first life-size portraits to depict horses without a rider in British history. The paintings changed the spirit of equine art forever.
‘Stubbs: Portrait of a Horse’ will focus on the creation of ‘Scrub’, which will be joined by other paintings and drawings by the artist. Join us in Spring 2026 to get a closer look at Stubbs’s groundbreaking work.