Gimcrack

George Stubbs painted Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath, the composition with a trainer, jockey and stable lad, around 1765 for Frederick St John, second Viscount Bolingbroke. The oil painting measures 102 × 193.6 cm and remains privately held. It is the broad composition with three attendants beside a standing horse, distinct from the Fitzwilliam Museum’s mounted portrait. ^[1]

The surprise is how much of the picture lies beyond its principal subject. Gimcrack stands far to the left, against a substantial brick building. One man holds his bridle, a boy crouches beneath his flank, and a third figure stands apart with riding equipment. Across the open ground, another horse draws ahead of three pursuers. The distant movement and the foreground attention occupy different scales, asking the eye to move between a contest and the work surrounding it. ^[1]

Looking at Gimcrack and his attendants

The approaching jockey is identified as John Pratt in Christie’s specialist account. The man holding the bridle is understood as the trainer, whose name is unrecorded; the kneeling stable lad also remains unnamed. ^[1]

The horse faces left, his neck reaching towards the holder’s hands. His dark body does not read as a single flat shape. Lighter passages trace the upper shoulder, catch parts of the back and spread unevenly over the ribcage; the underside and legs hold deeper tones. The differences make a rounded body perceptible even against the relatively dark wall. Head, mane and short tail form sharper accents. Looking from the nose along the back to the tail reveals a continuous contour, interrupted by small changes in direction rather than an exaggerated arch. The horse’s presence depends on this combination of a clearly bounded silhouette and light moving within it. ^[1]

The holder stands close to the left edge. His extended forearms bridge the small interval between his chest and Gimcrack’s muzzle; below them, the reins fall in long loops. His pale stockings and breeches remain legible against the shadowed building, while his coat belongs more closely to its muted colours. He neither turns outwards to claim the spectator nor makes a sweeping gesture. His activity is concentrated in the narrow space occupied by hands, leather and the horse’s head. The slack hanging below his grip is especially useful to notice: the image includes both a connection to the horse and the surplus line falling away from that connection. ^[1]

Rubbing down was part of care after exercise or racing. The Frick Collection’s exhibition notes describe the use of straw or rags to dry sweating horses, explaining the purpose of the sheds represented in Stubbs’s Newmarket landscapes. This gives the kneeling figure’s activity a practical context. He belongs to the horse’s working routine. The distinction changes the character of the encounter: ordinary maintenance is sufficiently important to occupy the foreground of a celebrated animal’s portrait. ^[14]

The lad’s pale sleeves, bent back and lowered arms form a compact patch of movement below the horse. Straw spreads around his knees and hands. His head rises against Gimcrack’s body, but most of his figure stays beneath the animal’s long horizontal outline. The relationship makes the difference in their sizes immediately clear. It also draws attention to an area easily missed when looking only at the horse’s head: the underside, legs and working space close to the ground. Stubbs gives the straw a lighter, more scattered appearance than the dense dark shapes above it. The boy’s task is thus visible through posture, placement and the material at his hands. ^[1]

Pratt is separated from this compact group by a strip of open ground. His black jacket, pale breeches and stockings create a strong upright shape. The brown saddle at his side breaks that narrow outline, while his cap and face turn back towards the horse. The equipment helps explain his place in the scene without putting him in the saddle. He is closer in height to the holder than to the boy, but occupies a brighter area with sky behind his upper body. These changes of spacing and background keep three small human figures distinct. None needs to be enlarged into a conventional full-length aristocratic portrait to remain individually noticeable. ^[1]

A small horse with a substantial racing history

Gimcrack was foaled in 1760 and bred by Gideon Elliott of Murrell Green in Hampshire. York Racecourse’s historical booklet identifies his sire as Cripple, a son of the Godolphin Arabian, and his dam as Miss Elliot, by Grisewood’s Partner. He was notably small, although historical measurements vary. His scale matters to the reputation that developed around him: this was an animal whose sustained success exceeded expectations attached to his size. His reputation rested on performance rather than imposing stature. ^[15]

William Pick’s 1803 Turf Register records seven victories in 1764, followed by a Newmarket win for William Wildman and sale to Bolingbroke. A payment when Selim withdrew was a forfeit, not another completed race. Gimcrack subsequently beat Rocket and Ascham in matches for 1,000 guineas each. Pick places his first defeat, against Bay Malton, before the Second October Meeting victory over Drone. His account also records the later French test of 22½ miles within an hour, and a final victory at Newmarket in 1771 before retirement to stud at Oxcroft. These were different kinds of engagement, spread across years and owners. ^[16]

The apparent simplicity of a career total can conceal those differences. In an undated letter preserved at Lydiard, Maurice W. Brockwell counted 26 victories from 36 races and challenged extravagant claims made for the horse. His figure is evidence of a later argument about Gimcrack’s reputation, rather than a fresh contemporary record of each start. A reader need not settle every disputed total to understand why the 1765 portrait mattered: the horse already had an established record, and its subsequent career gave later writers further material with which to celebrate or qualify it. ^[17]

Pick’s sequence also helps distinguish historical racing from the picture’s compressed narrative. Receiving a forfeit, winning a match and returning from a foreign endurance test are separate events. The painted foreground cannot stand for all of them. The register’s specific engagements provide a firmer historical footing than reading a lifetime record directly out of a single landscape. ^[16]

The register follows him beyond competition: his advertised Oxcroft fee was 25 guineas in 1772 and ten guineas in 1779. Such dated entries document the later stud career without turning every surviving portrait into a record of the same stage. ^[16]

What is happening in the distance?

The distant leader repeats Gimcrack. Christie’s interprets the background as a trial, probably in late May or June 1765. The proposed identities of the other horses remain tentative; the scene should not be treated as a securely identified race result. ^[1]

Four mounted horses run towards the left. The leader is visibly detached from the other three, which overlap near the right edge. Their riders lean forward, and their extended limbs produce a much quicker rhythm than the foreground horse’s standing legs. The pale rail behind them marks out the open strip on which they move. Near the middle, a small building rises above their level, its pale divisions and dark openings more regular than the broken ground below. There is no painted crowd lining the course. That absence is visible; the precise historical circumstances behind it require more than looking alone. ^[1]

An earlier dealer brochure offered a different explanation. Ellis & Smith’s The Bolingbroke Stubbs Racing Pictures called the distant event a victory at the First Spring Meeting of 1765. Its caption also attached the name John Platt to the bridle holder, whereas the modern account identifies the dismounted jockey as Pratt. These disagreements show how much interpretation has accumulated around a seemingly straightforward sporting scene. The brochure is valuable as a record of that history, but its caption cannot safely identify every participant or supply a definitive event. ^[18]

The temporal construction has also attracted critical attention. Writing in 2023, Yann Tholoniat discusses the coexistence of action in the distance and its aftermath in the foreground. He questions the apparently quiet world presented by Stubbs, arguing that such images can suppress the harsher circumstances of equine competition. His argument concerns the choices made in representing the sport. It directs attention to what the picture makes available for contemplation and what lies outside it. The horses running, the men working and the broad intervals of unoccupied ground need not be understood as an unedited record of one instant. ^[19]

The eye can make the journey in either direction. Starting with the dark foreground body, it crosses the standing jockey and reaches the smaller moving animals; starting at the right, it follows the runners towards the larger horse waiting at the other end. The continuous strip of land makes that movement easy, while the abrupt difference in scale prevents the two groups from merging. A viewer can recognise a relationship between them without losing the contrast between distant speed and near stillness. The canvas’s width is essential to the effect: the intervals belong to its construction as much as the occupied spaces do. ^[1]

The Newmarket setting

The large left-hand building gives the painting an unusually firm edge. Its roof slopes down towards the open centre, and a pale cornice runs across the wall above the horse. The brick surfaces and straight divisions are set against the irregular contour of Gimcrack’s body. Above, a considerable expanse of sky remains unobstructed. Pale clouds gather towards the centre, with darker passages towards the upper left and a warmer band low on the right. The warmer colour remains low and pale, allowing the darker foreground group to retain its clarity. ^[1]

The Frick notes identify Stubbs’s small Newmarket Heath with a Rubbing-Down House as one of two surviving landscapes without people or animals. They suggest that he probably worked from drawings made on the spot and used the painting as a reference for finished compositions. The importance of the building therefore extends beyond its place in one horse portrait: it could help establish a recognisable working environment in several images. ^[14]

David Pullins develops this point in his study of Stubbs’s working methods. He argues that the unpopulated Newmarket views, retained in the artist’s studio, functioned as reusable settings alongside highly finished animal studies. He relates them to both Gimcrack compositions, Turf and the much later Hambletonian, Rubbing Down. The argument helps explain why recurrence of a building need not identify the same event. A familiar setting could support different portraits and narratives. This places the Newmarket setting within a continuing studio practice, developed across several compositions. ^[20]

At ground level, the foreground is less smooth than the distant course. Pale exposed earth runs along the lower edge, broken by grass and darker patches. These small irregularities hold the near scene in place, while the far ground is reduced to longer, quieter bands. The name Gimcrack sits low beneath the principal horse, near the transition between dark and pale earth. It is discreet compared with the breadth of the scene. The inscription identifies an individual within a landscape spacious enough to extend well beyond him. ^[1]

Owners, patrons and an admiring spectator

William Wildman’s connection to Stubbs broadens the social history of these portraits. Sotheby’s account of the later Euston describes him as a grazier and meat salesman who built a prosperous business at Leadenhall Market. He commissioned portraits of Gimcrack and Eclipse and collected other works by the artist. The mounted Gimcrack therefore belongs to a patronage network that included commercial wealth as well as titled owners. Wildman’s profession is documented context; it should not be inferred from the appearance of any of the anonymous attendants in the larger painting. ^[21]

A letter dated 12 July 1765 gives a different kind of evidence for the horse’s contemporary appeal. Lady Sarah Bunbury, writing from Barton, recalled visiting Newmarket and expressed delight in Gimcrack. She juxtaposed her anxiety about the horse with the political change bringing Rockingham, Grafton and Conway to office, admitting greater concern for the racing. Published in her Life and Letters in 1901, the passage catches a private enthusiasm in the language of someone who knew the society surrounding the course. Its usefulness lies in showing that the animal’s attraction was already personal and immediate in the year usually assigned to the canvas. ^[22]

Later commemoration took a different form. The York booklet follows the horse’s changing ownership through the French period, Bunbury and Grosvenor, and places the paintings within the continuing culture of the Gimcrack Dinner. The name also survives in York’s Gimcrack Stakes, established in 1846. This legacy can make the horse seem inseparable from York, although the painting presents Newmarket. The remembered animal, the later race and the depicted location belong to connected but distinct histories. ^[15]

Wildman’s collection was substantial enough for his sons’ 1787 sale to include fifteen works by Stubbs. Sotheby’s account places his purchases alongside his direct commissions, showing that his interest extended beyond simply owning the likeness of a successful horse. The later Euston was another commission for him, rather than an alternative title for Gimcrack. Keeping the animals’ names and the objects’ histories separate reveals a continuing relationship between patron and painter. ^[21]

The mounted portrait at the Fitzwilliam

The Fitzwilliam Museum’s Gimcrack, with John Pratt up, on Newmarket Heath, accession PD.7-1982, is another oil on canvas of about 1765. Its current object record gives 100 × 124 cm. Painted for Wildman, it may commemorate the horse’s first Newmarket victory on 9 April 1765. That possibility remains a proposal, not an inscribed explanation. The museum acquired the picture in 1982 through a public appeal. ^[23]

Here Pratt wears red and sits upright on Gimcrack’s back. Horse and rider occupy the right half of a much less elongated composition, with a roofed building behind the hindquarters. A solitary post stands at the left, and trees gather low on the horizon. Clouds fill a large part of the space above. The rider’s vertical body is balanced by the long neck and back beneath him; his hands meet the reins just in front of the saddle. The picture offers no second field of galloping horses to be connected with the standing animal. Its concentration falls on the mounted pair and their immediate surroundings. ^[23]

The difference becomes clearer when comparing the buildings. In the large painting, the left wall contains the horse and attendants within a dark area before the land opens to the right. In the Fitzwilliam picture, the structure enters from the opposite side, behind a horse that stands against a brighter expanse. The shift changes where the eye finds enclosure and openness. Similar subject matter has produced two differently organised pictures; reducing either to a cropped detail of the other would lose the relationship between the figures, the building and the sky. ^{[1] [23]}

The mounted painting’s later history also separates it from the Bolingbroke canvas. The Fitzwilliam traces its ownership through Wildman’s posthumous sale, Sir Walter Gilbey, the Yorkshire Club and the Adeane family. Its present museum identity rests on that particular object history. The movement from private ownership to a public museum changed access to this particular portrait. ^[23]

Art Fund’s archived appeal record adds a specific financial detail: a £20,000 grant towards a total cost of £601,057. It dates the support to 1983, while the holding museum records acquisition in 1982. The grant formed one part of the wider appeal that secured the painting for a public collection. ^[24]

The museum records both a signature at the lower right and the name Gimcrack below the horse. The horse is thus named within the image as well as in its title, while the signature marks Stubbs’s authorship. ^[23]

Other versions and printed Gimcracks

A further multi-figure Gimcrack belongs to the Jockey Club. In 1898 Walter Gilbey described that picture with a bridle holder, a kneeling figure and distant horses, recording Admiral Rous’s bequest and an earlier attribution to Hogarth. His testimony establishes that the composition had a separate collecting and attribution history. It does not relocate the Bolingbroke painting to the Club. Gilbey also described a later, nearly white Gimcrack held by a groom, and reproduced a Turf Gallery account identifying an Oxcroft farmhouse and an assistant groom. These are separate portrait arrangements, associated with the horse’s stud career. ^[25]

Gilbey’s descriptions also preserve the importance of the human figure in the stud portraits. The Oxcroft account calls the attendant an assistant groom and identifies the setting as the owner’s farm. The horse’s identity continued, but its pictorial setting now concerned breeding and the people maintaining it. Those details help explain why a nearly white Gimcrack beside a single handler can carry the same name as the dark animal attended by three people at Newmarket. They do not supply names for the anonymous workers in the earlier canvas. ^[25]

The National Gallery’s account of the Turf Project explains the later effort to assemble famous racehorses into a historical series. Begun around 1790, it included copies of earlier pictures and new compositions. Sixteen paintings were completed and exhibited in 1794 at the Turf Gallery in Conduit Street; engravings in two sizes were made by Stubbs’s son for A Review of the Turf. Gimcrack’s return in this setting belongs to a retrospective survey of racing history, rather than another direct observation of the animal in 1765. ^[26]

The project’s funding failed before its ambitions were fulfilled. That incomplete history is useful when interpreting later reproductions: a set of prints could continue to circulate even though the larger painted survey had not developed as intended. The 1794 display and subsequent impressions belong to the reception of earlier racing fame, rather than to the original circumstances of the Bolingbroke commission. ^[26]

An actual later edition is documented in Dominic Winter’s 2021 catalogue: a bound set of fourteen large, uncoloured stipple engravings, including Gimcrack, republished by Edward Orme in 1817. The printmaker was George Townly Stubbs, working after George Stubbs. The distinction matters when encountering an image carrying only the horse’s name. A later impression can preserve a portrait’s design while belonging to a different medium, publication and date. The set’s catalogue does not establish that its Gimcrack reproduces the broad Bolingbroke scene. ^[27]

Nor was every printed Gimcrack designed by Stubbs. The Rijksmuseum holds The Pedigree and Performances of Bay Malton and the grey horse Gimcrack, dated 1766, a mezzotint by Richard Houston after Francis Sartorius, published by Robert Sayer and R. Heber. The paper sheet measures 337 × 456 mm. Its title links the rival horses through both ancestry and performance, showing how racing celebrity could circulate in a documentary format. Its makers and date identify a separate work. Gimcrack’s public image consequently extended beyond the work of a single painter. The broader history of Stubbs’s prints requires those distinctions between designer, printmaker and publisher. ^[28]

Treatment, collecting and changing judgements

The Ellis & Smith brochure also claimed that the two Bolingbroke racing pictures, Gimcrack and Turf, had been relined and cleaned after previously remaining untouched. This is a historical dealer’s assertion, couched in promotional language. It records an episode in the pictures’ presentation for sale, but supplies neither a modern conservation report nor grounds for repeating its assurances about flawless condition today. The pairing in the brochure is itself revealing: buyers were being invited to consider two works together as prestigious British paintings. ^[18]

Brockwell’s letter resisted that promotional framing. Addressing the editor of The Times, he questioned the superlatives being used for Gimcrack and separated admiration for the picture from claims about the horse’s supremacy. The undated clipping is an unusually direct reminder that neither sporting fame nor artistic standing has been free from disagreement. Its argument belongs to the painting’s later reception. ^[17]

The large canvas returned to the family after its 1780 sale, left it in 1943, passed through Walter Hutchinson, and entered the Woolavington Collection in 1951. Exhibitions included the 1984–85 Stubbs retrospective and Stubbs & the Horse in 2004–05. Christie’s sold it on 5 July 2011 for £22,441,250. ^[1]

Tholoniat’s later reading opens another line of debate: the beauty and order of an animal portrait can coexist with questions about the demands made on its subject. Attention to the human work in the foreground makes that question particularly relevant here. It need not settle into either a claim of perfect harmony or an invented story of suffering. The visible care, the implied exertion and the controlled presentation can all remain part of the encounter. ^[19]

Pullins’s discussion of reusable settings adds a complementary caution. Recognisability and careful observation do not make every finished painting a literal report of a single occasion. The artist could construct a convincing world from resources developed across different works. That distinction lets this picture be understood both within Stubbs’s racing subjects and as an independent arrangement of bodies, buildings and open land. Its historical information and pictorial construction are inseparable, but they answer different questions. ^[20]