Five Brood Mares

George Stubbs painted this group for the Duke of Cumberland in 1765. The five mares stand beneath a tree, with water beyond them. The painting is now at Ascott, in the National Trust’s Anthony de Rothschild Collection. ^[1]

A group made from differences

An oil painting on canvas, it measures 99.1 × 188 centimetres. The National Trust records a dated signature at the lower right and locates the subject at the Duke’s stud farm in Windsor Great Park. ^[1]

Five adult horses spread across the foreground, each held apart by a different action or direction of attention. At the far left, a grey lifts its head towards the foliage. Beside it, a warmer-coloured mare lowers its neck to graze. The central pale horse faces left, while the two darker animals on the right bring their heads towards one another. These shifts keep the group from becoming a row of identical profiles. The eye moves from the raised head to the lowered one, then across the pale body at the centre to the close encounter at the right. ^[15]

The tree gives the animals a shared place without enclosing them completely. Its massive trunk rises behind the central grey and divides into limbs that stretch out above the group. The darkest passages lie around its base and across the nearest ground. Beyond the horses, the landscape opens: a line of smaller trees leads towards water on the right, where the view becomes lighter and more distant. The horses occupy the boundary between these deep foreground shadows and the more open country behind them. ^[15]

The central grey is especially prominent because its light flank meets the dark trunk. Its long body offers a clear, relatively uninterrupted shape, whereas the neighbouring animals are seen through changes of angle, bent necks and overlapping contours. At the opposite end, the bay’s broad side and long legs close the group. These unequal shapes distribute attention across the canvas, making a composition from animals that remain visibly separate. ^[15]

There are no riders, saddles or stable servants among them. The small intervals of open ground between legs matter as much to the arrangement as the heavier masses above. The low position of the distant tree line allows heads and necks to stand out against the sky. The space surrounding the animals gives their separate shapes room to register, while the great tree gathers them beneath its spreading branches. ^[15]

The Duke and the Windsor stud

The patron was William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, the third son of George II. He was a general whose career included victory at Culloden in 1746 and severe treatment of the defeated Jacobites, which earned him the name “Butcher of Culloden”. After military reverses, he resigned his commands in 1757. The National Portrait Gallery’s biographical catalogue also identifies his stud as one of the best in England. The painting belongs to this sporting interest within a much more contentious public life. ^[16]

Cumberland became Ranger of Windsor Great Park in 1746. The history published by Cumberland Lodge describes how he enlarged the house, built stables and altered the surrounding landscape with the architect Henry Flitcroft. Horses were therefore part of a substantial managed estate. The open setting in Stubbs’s picture can be placed within that history of royal land, buildings and breeding, even though the painting itself concentrates on the animals rather than presenting the Lodge or its stables. ^[17]

The Royal Collection’s account of the Windsor gardens adds another participant: Thomas Sandby, who became Cumberland’s Deputy Ranger and Steward. Sandby was both an artist and an architect, involved in the transformation of the Great Park. The Duke’s activities extended between Cumberland Lodge and Cranbourne Lodge, within a landscape containing keepers’ houses, hunting grounds and newly developed features. This was country shaped by repeated human decisions. Stubbs’s broad meadow and water belong to the representation of an estate, rather than supplying a view of horses isolated from the history of the land around them. ^[18]

The National Trust identifies the painting as Stubbs’s first royal commission, received from George III’s uncle. Royal patronage gave the group significance within his developing career. ^[1]

Brood mares before an exhibition audience

The National Trust records the picture’s exhibition in 1765. That year’s Society of Artists catalogue lists Stubbs’s “Brood mares” as number 127, between a hunting “tyger” and a hunter. The exhibition opened on 23 April in Spring Gardens, bringing these different animal subjects before a public audience. ^{[1] [19]}

The same catalogue also lists a picture by Sawrey Gilpin of King Herod’s dam, owned by the Duke of Cumberland, accompanied by her brood at different ages. Gilpin also exhibited portraits of King Herod and Dapper. This is a separate work, but its presence is revealing. The Duke’s horses could generate both individual portraits and maternal groups, and his patronage involved more than one painter. Exhibition visitors encountered horse breeding through named animals and through the relationships between generations. ^[19]

The mares’ place in breeding

A brood mare was valued for the horses she could produce as well as for her own physical qualities. Judy Egerton’s discussion of Stubbs’s equine groups emphasises the careful selection and expense involved in breeding. The owners who commissioned these paintings had reasons to recognise particular animals, while other viewers could enjoy their arrangement within a landscape. Stubbs’s subject joins those interests: a group pleasing to look at also represents an investment in future generations of racehorses. ^[20]

The maternal structure of breeding can be seen in the General Stud Book of 1803. Under Cypron, a mare foaled in 1750, it lists a sequence of offspring by different stallions. King Herod appears in 1758, by Tartar, within the entries bracketed under the Duke of Cumberland’s name. The same page continues into later ownerships and later foals. It records a mare’s breeding life across years, showing how the history of a stud was assembled from repeated pairings and their results. ^[21]

Spilletta’s entry offers another connection with the Duke’s establishment. Her offspring include the chestnut colt Eclipse, foaled in 1764 by Marske. These records give substance to the world represented by the painting, although they do not identify Cypron or Spilletta among its five animals. The book preserves names, dates, parentage and ownership; Stubbs gives the adults a physical presence through their bodies, coats and positions in a shared place. ^{[15] [21]}

The later success of Herod shows how far the effects of such breeding could extend. Michael Church records that Cumberland bred him in Windsor Forest and that, following the Duke’s death in 1765, he passed to Sir John Moore. Herod subsequently became leading sire for eight successive years, from 1777 to 1784. His offspring included Highflyer, Woodpecker and Florizel, themselves influential in racing and breeding. This later history gives the mares’ subject particular weight: a stud’s importance depended on combinations of parents and descendants, with results that could emerge long after a commission had been completed. ^[22]

Related groups and a different setting

A useful comparison is Stubbs’s group painted for the Marquess of Rockingham in 1762. A receipt transcribed by Egerton specifies five brood mares and two foals. That work is now known as Mares and Foals without a Background: seven animals, including young horses, rather than Cumberland’s five adults. ^[20]

In the Rockingham picture, the horses stand against a plain ground. Foals introduce smaller bodies and shorter legs between the adults, while the lowered head of a central mare carries the movement towards the bottom of the canvas. Cumberland’s painting places its pale central horse beside the tree and opens a view towards water. The comparison changes what we notice: in one, the animals and the spaces between them carry almost the entire design; in the other, trunk, branches, shadow and distance take an active part in joining the group. ^{[15] [20]}

The recurring subject continued in other commissions, including the separate Mares and Foals in a River Landscape. Egerton describes how Stubbs could reuse and alter animal groupings, introducing a different landscape or changing a horse’s colour. This flexibility helped him return to a familiar theme with fresh arrangements. Cumberland’s adult group remains distinctive within that practice because it makes the mares themselves, without young horses beside them, the complete gathering. ^{[15] [20]}

From a royal stud to Ascott

The National Trust’s provenance lists the Earl of Clarendon, Leopold de Rothschild and descent to Anthony de Rothschild. Anthony gave the painting to the Trust with Ascott in 1949. The sequence connects the royal commission with its later home, while leaving the details of some early transfers unrecorded. ^[1]

Leopold’s connection with horses extended well beyond collecting pictures. The Rothschild Archive records that he took over his father’s stud at Gunnersbury in 1879 and subsequently moved it to his Ascott estate. It became Southcourt Stud, from which successful racehorses were bred. The Archive distinguishes the transfer of the house to the National Trust in 1949 from the stud, which remained in family ownership. At Ascott, a painting of an eighteenth-century breeding establishment entered surroundings shaped by a later enthusiasm for the turf. The connection adds a further chapter to the picture’s life as an object valued by people involved with horses. ^[23]

Ascott’s account of the house places the Stubbs above the fireplace in the Hall and relates it to the family’s love of racing. The painting forms part of a country-house collection that also includes furniture, ceramics and works by other artists. Its present setting continues the association between sporting interests and the collection of art. ^[24]

A twentieth-century response

Walter Shaw Sparrow gave the painting sustained attention in British Sporting Artists in 1922, when he described it as belonging to Mrs Leopold de Rothschild. He admired the restraint with which Stubbs brought the horses into a decorative arrangement, and dwelt on the changes of colour produced by outdoor light. He found it difficult to give simple colour names to the coats, which appeared altered by their surroundings. This response directs attention to Stubbs as a painter of relationships between forms and tones, alongside his achievement as a portrayer of horses. ^[25]

Sparrow also reported that Alfred Munnings placed the picture among his favourite works by Stubbs. The report adds a practising painter’s admiration to the history of the commission and its collectors, showing that the group continued to hold attention well beyond its original royal setting. ^[25]