A new National Gallery exhibition devoted to George Stubbs will centre a monumental painting of a rearing horse, Scrub, a bay horse belonging to the Marquess of Rockingham (about 1762). Previously seen in public only once and the only life-size horse portrait by Stubbs still in a private collection, the painting will go on display 12 March-31 May 2026 in the H J Hyams Room. Admission is free.
The exhibition places Scrub in dialogue with Whistlejacket (about 1762), Stubbs’s celebrated masterpiece in the National Gallery’s collection, on view nearby. Painted in the same year for the same patron, the two works are among the first large-scale British portraits of horses shown without riders. They reflect Stubbs’s radical rethinking of equine painting in the eighteenth century, largely informed by his rigorous anatomical studies and close observation of individual animals.
The exhibition brings attention to the depth of Stubbs’s engagement with the horse as a subject. Together, these works underline how Stubbs combined scientific precision with artistic intent, reshaping the genre of animal painting in Britain.
