Original subtitles

George Stubbs is the greatest painter of horses who ever lived.

He was a sporting artist, but so much more than that.

A man who literally dissected his subject before he felt able to paint it.

He's also a tough, disturbing and complex artist, but rarely one who also strikes the

broadest popular chord.

So in 1977, these two paintings were about to be sold, perhaps they were going to leave the country.

And so the take gallery moved in, but it didn't have the 774,000 pounds required to buy them.

So the public responded.

It was an early form of lottery established.

There was a crossword competition and a writing competition.

And in the end, over six months, the money was raised by the people in order that the work should remain

in the national collection for the people.

George Stubbs was born in Liverpool in 1724.

His father, who objected to his son's early artistic interest, was a courier, preparing

horse heights for the local Tanneries.

So as a boy, Stubbs was made to work for his father, and only after his death in 1741,

when Stubbs was 17, was he able to make any serious commitment to art.

He worked for a short time, assisting the provincial painter, Hamlet Win Stanley,

copying Prince.

Afterwards, he spent time again at the family home, drawing and studying anatomy, relying

for financial support from his mother.

And this is the first work that is known to us by Stubbs.

It was painted in 1746 when Stubbs was 22.

A double portrait of Sahenry now thought and his second wife.

We don't know how the Stubbs came to be known to the now thoughts, but this was an important first commission

as the family would prove loyal patrons to Stubbs in the years to come.

Shortly afterwards, he moved to York, furthering his study of anatomy, at the county hospital.

There he came into contact with the obstetrician Dr. John Burton,

who asked Stubbs to illustrate a book he was currently writing on the improvements in midwifery methods.

Stubbs had no experience in etching, so he went to see a decorative painter in leads to pick up the basics.

The 18 plates that Stubbs subsequently produced were his first published works.

It was around this time that Stubbs met Mary Spencer, who would remain his lifelong companion and assistant.

They never married, but had a son shortly after meeting.

And then in 1754 Stubbs joined the stream of young British artists on the grand tour,

making their way to what they considered to be the cradle of western civilization, Italy.

Stubbs is one of the first generation of British artists, for whom a trip to Italy seemed to prerequisite for success.

However, Stubbs seemed unmoved by the experience, staying only a few months and finding nothing to admire,

being quoted as saying, nature was and is always superior to art, with a Greek or Roman.

And it was this idea of drawing from nature that inspired Stubbs to study an intricate detail.

The anatomy of a horse.

And probably with an actual help from the Nellthorbs, he began the project that was to transform his reputation.

For 18 months, beginning in 1756, Stubbs, together with his companion Mary Spencer,

lived and worked in an isolated farmhouse in Lincolnshire, where they embarked on a systematic study of the anatomy of the horse.

Able to rely on a constant supply of dead horses from the local Tanneris, Stubbs would suspend the cadavers from the ceiling on a series of hooks,

forming the horse into a lifelike pose, and then he'd set to work slowly removing the layers of skin and muscle,

recording every detail until only the skeleton remained.

His research was both anatomical and archaeological,

delving deep into the recesses of the equine body, laying it bare in order more fully to understand how it worked,

from the inside out, and all in order to paint it as accurately as possible.

It was the first new study of the subject for over 150 years, but it was unprecedented in its detail.

Stubbs was determined to publish the anatomy of a horse, and he brought his drawings to London,

and he showed them to a number of professional engravers, but no one would take up the project,

because the subject matter was so unusual, so instead Stubbs decided to publish his prints himself and so.

He worked on the project part-time while still earning a living from painting portraits,

and it took him eight years, but finally, in 1766, the remarkable anatomy of a horse was published.

And it couldn't have come at a better time.

For in 1750, the Jockey Club was founded in England, made up of wealthy aristocrats,

intent on regulating and promoting race meetings.

In addition, they were keen to find an artist who could depict their prized horses in a realistic manner,

and Stubbs was only too pleased to supply the market.

The first commission was for the Duke of Richmond, for his seat at Goodwood House in Sussex,

and this is Stubbs' first depiction of the horse in paint, of the Charlton Hunt.

The Duke, who was 28 at the time of the painting, an active military officer,

is in the centre of the picture, sitting tall in his saddle, wearing the Goodwood blue,

the delivery of the Charlton Hunt, with his brother, Lord George Lennox, advancing towards him.

And in the background, the hunt itself takes place.

The Charlton Hunt canals were famous for their thoroughbred foxhounds,

and these in the foreground were the first that Stubbs had the chance to observe,

portraying them with great individuality and a little affection.

With a backing of such patrons, Stubbs started the most productive period of his career.

Beginning in 1762, with a series of paintings of mares and folds, Stubbs arranges his work

in an almost classical freeze-like composition, freed from the bridles, the saddles,

and the spurs of the race course, and they seem almost sculptural in form,

illustrating just how Stubbs was trying to elevate mere animal paintings to the status of high art.

This combination of drawing from life and then arranging the horses into an idealised composition was a potent one.

But Stubbs' painting went a stage further, in perhaps his greatest, and certainly his most eye-catching masterpiece.

His called Whistlejacket, and it's one of the greatest equestrian paintings ever made.

Now Whistlejacket was a palamanian stallion owned by the Marcus of Rockingham,

who'd made his owner a pretty substantial fortune on the race course,

but he was retired in 1759, put out a stud, but three years later,

Rockingham decided he wanted a painting of his prized possession.

Now there's all sorts of stories about this work, not least,

because Whistlejacket has no background.

There's no context, instead he set against a void.

And one of the theories is that in fact, Rockingham, who was intricately involved with the affairs of Staten later

for a brief period became Prime Minister, wanted a commission,

an equestrian portrait of King George III, and then having got this far,

he decided, along with Stubbs, that they wouldn't bother to put the King on the horse,

nor would they bother to fill in the background.

Now that may or may not be true, what I think is certainly true,

and we know this from Stubbs' records is that he always paints the horse's first

and then the background second, and I think that he probably realized, along with his patron,

that this was enough, that it needed nothing else,

but it gives the work a kind of timeless quality, and a very contemporary, or very modern feel too.

It's the kind of painting that, because of its energy,

and because of the fact that it's this monumental or life-size image of a horse,

it really seems to have caught the public imagination over the centuries,

and spawned all kinds of stories, the best of which came about when the work was first shown,

and it was claimed that whistle-jacking himself was confronted by this canvas

when Stubbs was painting it out in the paddock, just as he was finishing it,

and the horse saw it reared up and tried to kick it,

and they together with the stable-lad Stubbs had to restrain him, and apparently beating with his mouth,

sticking his palate. I think that's pretty ludicrous though,

not least, because can you imagine a canvas of this size, out in a muddy paddock,

and a painter like Stubbs having to wrestle with it?

I think it's clear that he's sketched and drew him and observed very closely this horse,

because it was paraded to and thrown front of him, but clearly the canvas itself

was completed in Stubbs' studio.

But what we're left with is this extraordinary image of vitality and vigor,

of a horse that has been very successful on the race course,

but now is out to start and has this amazing virility, if you like.

It's also a work that seems incredibly composed,

the image is taught, it's pulled in by its frame.

Look at the tail the way it lifts up to give balance.

Look at the way the pointed ears that are there,

good expression on the face, the flash in the eye.

It's an image of absolute perfect poise, but at the same time,

it threatens to burst out of the frame,

and it's that, I think, that sense of almost abstract taught energy

that gives the painting its ongoing power.

By 1762 when Stubbs was 38, he emerged as the leading sporting artist of the day.

The problem though was the artist establishment, because for them,

painting was an intellectual pursuit and the result of imagination,

as well as the acute powers of observation that Stubbs brought to it.

The landscape of the race track and of the Stubbs was restrictive and so Stubbs had to look further afield.

The crystal crags are an isolated rock formation on the borders of notting

and shirt and darbisher, a rugged landscape of limestone cliffs,

whose drama and beauty perfectly conformed to the emerging idea of the picture-esque,

and which gave Stubbs a more natural setting in which he could depict his horses,

but where they could also be exposed to the more savage forces of nature.

Now the landscape of crystal crags provided the backdrop for a series

that eventually numbered 17 of which this is an early example,

that one artist story is called animal history, and it shows a lion

who goes through various stages of attacking a horse.

And I think probably it could be argued that for the first time in his career Stubbs

puts the landscape in first before the animals then populate the picture.

And here you see the horse, recoiling in fear as out of the darkness, comes this lion.

Now in the series there are four stages of the narrative.

The first is the lion at distance frightening the horse.

Then he's moving in closer.

Then thirdly he attacks and then fourthly the horse sinks under the weight

as the lion puts teeth and claws into the flesh of the poor horse.

Now the precedents for this were classical.

In Rome on the capitaline hill there was an antique sculpture of a lion attacking a horse.

It's pretty clear that Stubbs had seen that.

It's also pretty clear that he's trying to elevate sporting painting

and give it something of the status of classical art or grand style art.

But he's also in these works putting himself forward as a painter of the imagination

as well as someone who looks and observes.

Because although it was perfectly plausible that he'd seen a lion

at one of his patrons, Manageries, Lord Sheldon had a lion at his house on Hanslow Heath.

Nonetheless Stubbs could never have seen a lion attacking a horse.

And what he's also trying to do is put forward

an idea that was philosophically very strong at the time, namely that of the Sublime.

The idea of the Sublime written by the philosopher Edmund Burke,

published first in 1759, was the awe and the terror that human beings feel

when they're confronted by the awesome power of nature.

This is usually made manifest in storms, particularly it's seen turner later on

became a great exponent of the Sublime in painting.

Here, in something that seems slightly more populous,

Stubbs has the idea of the Sublime Force of a wild animal

and the fear the horse feels were confronted by it.

And so in a way what he's doing here is Managerie to combine high art theory

with the more popular taste of the day.

And in fact, these paintings and the prints that he made

under a leafy did for which with pottery of the same subject

were amongst the most popular works that he ever produced.

Stubbs was also commissioned to paint a number of other wild animals

which were just arriving in Britain, the trophies of a newly powerful and growing empire.

And this image of a cheetah sent as a gift to George III

from a former Governor General of Madras commemorates an event

that took place in Windsor-Great Park in which the cheetah was set loose

on a stag in order to observe its hunting technique.

In the end, the experiment was a failure though, as the stag easily defended itself.

In Stubbs' painting though, there is a sense of the exotic, both animal and human,

and Stubbs' paints both the cheetah and its Indian attendance

with equal drama and attention to detail.

Stubbs' main source of income was still painting portraits of horses for wealthy clients

and its MD65 began a series set on new market race course

beginning with an extraordinary pair of landscapes populated by no horses

and no human beings, of which this is perhaps the most poignant example.

It's a real gem of a painting, and it shows here on the left-hand side what's called a rubbing down house

where the horses were bought after a race or after exercise

and they were rubbed down with either cloths or bits of straw to get the sweat off them.

And you have this amazing sense of distance where you see these two viewing stands

and this post in the middle like a tower which in fact is a betting post

but the whole painting reverberates with the sense of emptiness.

This is the line the track at which the horses were race

but Stubbs manages to give the race course almost a kind of mythical feel.

But this is also a kind of formal exercise

where Stubbs is establishing the backdrop

and then in the next painting he puts the horses in.

In Jim Crack on New Market Heath, Stubbs has shown both the aftermath of the race

in the foreground and the race itself.

So this is a really archaic presentation of the subject

in defiance of the normal unities of time and place.

In the 18th century, racing drew enormous crowds

from the many different strata's of society.

And the race course was the venue for frantic betting, boxing, and cockfighting.

The crowds would line the course, leaving only enough space for the horses to pass through.

But these elements are entirely absent in Stubbs' vision of new market.

But he was much less of a documentary painter and more interested in the drama and the spirit of the occasion.

In 1785 Stubbs produced this pair of paintings that shows just how much you want to

broaden the subject matter of his art.

This is called the Reapers and this is the Haymakers

and the two works sit wonderfully well together.

There's a continual line if you like a action

and you could reverse them and create a kind of pyramid from the trees

or the landscape in the background.

And what Stubbs is doing here is showing the rural world at work.

It's a kind of daily or mundane occurrence.

Now there's plenty of precedence for this subject matter in art.

But the work has tend to be sentimentalised.

I don't think Stubbs does that, but I think what he does do is idealise them slightly.

They all wear immaculate and rather smart costumes.

In a way Stubbs is trying to affirm their dignity.

He's also showing in an almost manifesto or diagrammatic style

the different activities from the raking to the reaping for the putting on the back of the Hayric.

But at the same time, he's imposing this huge sense of order in the work.

Look at this composition here.

It's a very strong pyramid.

And then the dominant form there on the right hand side of the owner

or the agricultural estate manager.

The idle classes just looking over the workers at work.

And then, in the distance, there's a spire also looming large in the picture.

And these two symbols of authority, which tower over the people going about their daily tasks.

And I think one of the things Stubbs is trying to do here,

apart from choreograph what's tantamount to a mechanical or workers ballet,

is show the dignity and the hard work that goes on in the countryside.

And at the time, there was growing dissent in the countryside.

Certainly amongst the urban classes, there was a feeling that the countryside was a problem.

And what Stubbs is trying to do is redress the balance and show a disciplined and harmonious world there.

And he showed these at the Royal Academy.

And he also used them as a basis for popular prints.

Perhaps to show the world that, in fact, the countryside wasn't much of a problem.

But the response was critical.

In fact, people said this isn't how the countryside is.

It didn't reinforce the stereotypical view.

Now, if we spin on a couple of hundred years to 1977,

when there's a danger that these works will be lost to the nation,

but of course the nation rallies raises the money.

And here they are now preserved for posterity.

In the press, all the talk is of these works embodying or capturing the essence of Englishness,

something that subsequently is lost.

In fact, though, that flies totally in the face of the response to those who saw these works initially.

And there's something deeply and quite satisfyingly contradictory about these paintings.

In 1795, at the age of 71, Stubbs embarked on the systematic task of exploring and recording

the comparative anatomy of humans, tigers, and common foul.

Over the next 11 years, Stubbs produced more than 120 drawings and four volumes of text.

What is proposed by the comparative anatomy, is that scientific inquiry could be beautiful and enlightening

that science and aesthetics are not opposed, but could exist fruitfully together,

an idea which still has contemporary resonance.

Stubbs' last great work, and some would say, is greatest, now resides in Northern Ireland at Mount Stewart.

One of the country houses of the family who commissioned it.

Henry Vain Tempest was a 28-year-old landowner who was wealthy enough to indulge in his twin passions of racing and gambling,

and who, in 1796, bought one of the great horses of his time, Hamiltonian.

You could say that Stubbs immortalized Hamiltonian, but in fact, his place in racing history was assured.

He'd won the Domkaster Gold Cup and the St. Ledger, and then on the 25th of March, 1799,

he took part in one of the races of the decade, together with another great horse called Diamond,

whose owner, Joseph Cuxson, and Henry Vain Tempel, put up a purse between them of 3,000 Guinness.

The race was staged at New Market where Stubbs had painted over the previous few decades,

and drew crowds of tens of thousands.

Apparently, according to contemporary accounts, you couldn't get a bed within a 15-mile radius of the place,

and over 30,000 Guinness were best on it.

The winner, of course, was Hamiltonian.

And immediately, his owner, Vain Tempest, commissioned two works from Stubbs,

and this is the only one that's left, and one of his most celebrated paintings.

What you'd expect to see is the drama of the race itself.

Now, what Stubbs gives us is a rather private moment after the most dramatic public spectacle,

and that's extraordinarily subtle. What you'd expect to see here is a horse in triumph.

What you see is a horse with his teeth slightly fled.

It's clearly exhausted, but still has this great sense of energy.

It's cantering along, and it's being rubbed down.

And it's being nurtured and cared for, and there's something very ordinary about that image,

that is also rendered extraordinary by the background that seems to be a general place,

but also some kind of Arcadia.

But also, in the extraordinary way, that Stubbs wrestles with the animal itself,

hit dominate the canvas.

It's almost spread out across the entire length of the canvas,

life-size as if it's some scientific diagram.

And you can only paint a horse with that beautiful glowing sheen,

and that musculature, and a sense almost of an animal breathing,

if you've studded the animal, the Stubbs had from the inside out.

But there's also something else that's all about it.

Look at the young boy, his hand seems far too stretched,

and in fact, it would never reach quite as far.

And then look at Hamiltonian itself, look how those legs are,

the right legs and the left legs could never be in that configuration.

And we're not quite sure why Stubbs chose to paint with this kind of audience,

except what we do know is that he was having a battle with Vain Tempest.

And Vain Tempest refused to pay the amount of money that was agreed

and there was a court case, and in the end Stubbs did get his due fee for it.

But Vain Tempest also wanted to corner the market in colour prints of this image.

But by produce something so odd and so ordinary,

and such a behind-the-scenes view, of course,

it would never sell on the popular market.

So perhaps Stubbs, at the age of 78, is calling the shots.

He won't be controlled anymore.

But it's also as if Stubbs is feeling constrained

by the framework of the genre of art, the sporting genre,

in which he has painted for almost all of his life.

And you get a sense here, finally, of an experimental artist

who's trying to break out of all of that.

And effectively, if he'll excuse the pun, ride rough shot over it.

Stubbs died on the 10th of July, 1800 and 6 in his London home.

He was 82 years old.

And although he'd been one of the most successful commercial painters over the previous six decades,

it was discovered that he was still heavily in debt.

Stubbs took a popular, but low regarded form of painting

and gave it gravitation authority.

He stripped horse painting back to bury essentials

and then built it up into a classical form of art.

No British born painter has ever had this obsessive attention

to study in detail.

But Stubbs was no dispassionate observer.

Instead, he brought a weight of feeling to his work

that sometimes makes the spine tingle,

and which began to make human beings more aware of their place

in the natural order of things.