Master of the horse

George Stubbs (1724–1806) is best remembered as the dedicated anatomist of the horse, a man who would spend weeks alone in a room with a suspended equine carcass, gradually stripping away the muscles and recording what he learnt. Neither the stench nor the decomposition deterred him, for he was as resolute and methodical as a scientist in his pursuit of verifiable truth. In 1766 he published his findings in a beautiful book of 18 engravings, The Anatomy of the Horse, a substantial contribution to science (much consulted by vets and horse doctors), but intended primarily for the use of artists. For Stubbs was not just a superlative draughtsman (some of the drawings for the book are on view in the first room of this exhibition), he was also a painter of genius, a classicist gifted with a sense of pictorial design that is poetic in its sureness and economy.

Surprisingly, this exhibition is the first to focus exclusively on Stubbs’s passion for the horse, proof-positive that his reputation is now so firmly established that it cannot be diminished by the practice of what was traditionally thought of as a genre much lower than history painting or even portraiture. Given the essentially outdoor nature of the subject, these paintings might look peculiarly out of place in the dim basement galleries of the National Gallery. But they don’t. The Sainsbury Wing suite is for once resplendent.

The central gallery provides a stunning opening, with ‘Whistlejacket’ rearing up against terracotta red walls, and his companion pieces — one of them of mares and foals, depicted on equally neutral sandy grounds (rather than in landscape) — are the epitome of elegance. The other galleries lead off in usefully enlightening and aesthetically diverting ways.