The National Gallery paid £1 lmillion in 1997 to buy a painting of the Marquess of Rockingham's racehorse Whistlejacket. Who was the artist?
Whistlejacket Whistlejacket Whistlejacket is an oil-on-canvas painting from about 1762 by the British artist George Stubbs showing the Marquess of Rockingham's racehorse approximately at lifesize, rearing up against a plain background. The canvas is large, lacks any other content except some discreet shadows, and Stubbs has paid precise attention to the details of the horse's appearance. It has been described in "The Independent" as "a paradigm of the flawless beauty of an Arabian thoroughbred". The Fitzwilliam family, heirs of the childless Rockingham, retained the painting until 1997 when funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund allowed the National Gallery, London to acquire
George Stubbs for several more dukes and other lords and was able to buy a house in Marylebone, a fashionable part of London, where he lived for the rest of his life. His most famous work is probably "Whistlejacket", a painting of the thoroughbred race horse rising on his hind legs, commissioned by the 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, which is now in the National Gallery in London. This and two other paintings carried out for Rockingham break with convention in having plain backgrounds. Throughout the 1760s he produced a wide range of individual and group portraits of horses, sometimes accompanied by hounds.