Otho and John Larkin

George Stubbs painted Otho, with John Larkin up in 1768. Tate’s canvas, T02375, measures 101.3 by 127 centimetres. It gives a named racehorse and his rider a setting in which light, weather and buildings matter almost as much as the two figures. ^[1]

Horse, rider and an unsettled sky

Otho stands across the lower left and middle of the picture, facing right. His body is a broad, warm shape against the cooler land behind him. Light picks out the rounded hindquarters, the side of the belly and the long slope towards the shoulder. Darker passages run beneath the saddle and along the underside of the neck. These changes in tone turn the horse’s flank towards us without losing the clarity of his outline. The dark tail projects to the left, balancing the head and muzzle at the other end. ^[15]

The raised neck makes a long curve from chest to ears. A narrow line of dark mane follows its upper edge, while the face catches a brighter, more golden light. The ears point upwards and slightly apart. Around the eye and muzzle, small dark accents interrupt the illuminated surface. A dark rein runs from the bridle back towards Larkin’s hands. Its nearly horizontal line cuts across the rising neck, connecting the horse’s head with the rider’s quiet position over his back. ^[15]

John Larkin sits tall in the saddle. His green coat is darker than his yellow breeches, and the pale stockings make his bent leg conspicuous against the horse. His black footwear rests in the stirrup below the belly. The cap and pale neckcloth give his head a compact, sharply edged shape against the clouds. Stubbs places the small, light face above a nearly continuous green outline running down the back and arm. The rider is easily found within the larger mass of the horse, although he occupies much less space. ^[15]

The hands rest low, close to the front of the saddle, rather than rising in a conspicuous gesture. The body is upright, but the leg bends around the animal’s side. This combination of straight back and angled leg connects a composed upper figure to the curved body beneath it. The dark saddlecloth, its lighter border and the striped girth introduce smaller rectangles and bands. They organise the meeting of rider and horse without breaking the broad sweep from the hindquarters through the shoulder to the lifted head. ^[15]

Below, the legs make a more open pattern. The forelegs stand close together beneath the chest; the hind legs are spaced farther apart, with their pale hoof edges catching light near the ground. Small intervals of background remain visible between the narrow limbs. Against the substantial body above, these long dark supports look especially delicate. The lower edge of the painting is mostly in shadow. Otho’s name appears within that dark foreground, beneath the horse rather than beside the rider. ^[15]

The building at the right occupies much of the space towards which the pair faces. Its broad roof slopes up from the lower left before running beyond the picture’s edge. Thick, uneven material at the eaves softens a shape otherwise built from firm diagonals and horizontal lines. Below it, the brick wall carries a small square window and a much larger, almost black doorway. The corner of the structure makes a strong vertical division. Otho’s head stops short of it, leaving a narrow interval between the living group and the wall. ^[15]

Above the horse, great masses of grey cloud move across a lighter sky. Their rounded forms echo the horse’s body at a much larger scale. Patches of pale blue remain at the left and towards the upper right, but the darkest clouds gather over and behind the rider. The roof cuts across this changing sky with a solid, low silhouette. Weather seems expansive and mobile; the building is heavy and fixed. Horse and rider occupy the space between these two kinds of shape. ^[15]

The distance is smaller and quieter. A pale spire rises near the horse’s muzzle, above a tower and low buildings partly screened by trees. Behind them, a long green slope makes an almost uninterrupted horizon. The bright tower stands between the dark horse and the shadowed building, pulling the eye through the narrow gap into the landscape. Across the lower picture, strips of lit grass alternate with darker ground. The sunlight touches separate surfaces rather than spreading evenly across a single, open field. ^[15]

A portrait after the racing season

Tate identifies Otho as a bay colt bred and initially owned by Richard Vernon, a founding member of the Jockey Club. Its commentary singles out several victories in 1767, the horse’s final racing year, and proposes that the portrait commemorated those successes. That makes the painting a reflection on an achieved career, while its dramatic weather gives a still presentation some of racing’s uncertainty. ^[16]

The Frick Collection’s account names John Larkin as a gentleman jockey who owned and rode racehorses. It places the pair on Newmarket Heath, facing a rubbing-down shed, with the town and Saint Mary’s Church beyond. The same account dates Otho’s retirement to stud to 1768. The portrait therefore brings a recognisable rider and racing place into the horse’s transition from competition to breeding. ^[17]

Larkin also belonged to a family associated with horses. A Christie’s catalogue identifies his father as James Larkin, who became a prominent trainer. The catalogue proposes James as the rider in a separate painting of Sedbury attributed to James Seymour, while recording reservations about that attribution. ^[18] This is a useful family connection, but the human presence in Stubbs’s picture remains particular: a named rider whose small face, straight back and close-held hands demand attention alongside the horse. ^[15]

Vernon, Ossory and Otho’s record

William Pick’s Turf Register of 1803 records Otho as a bay horse foaled in 1760, by Moses out of Miss Vernon. Pick traces his breeding to Richard Vernon and his later sale to Lord Ossory, following a defeat by Bay Malton in April 1766. Earlier successes included a Bedford prize and a Newmarket match against Turf in 1764. The account then records victories in the Jockey Club Plate and over the Duke of Grafton’s Antinous in 1767. ^[19]

Otho’s record connects him with Antinoüs. The connection gives the individual likeness a larger context within Georgian racing: owners, rivals and named performances surrounded the apparently solitary animal. It does not turn this quiet mounted portrait into an illustration of the encounter with Antinous. ^[19]

The work behind the building

A rubbing house belonged to the practical care of racehorses. Historic England’s account of Southfields at Newmarket describes horses exercising vigorously under cloths and then having the resulting sweat rubbed down. The surviving Southfields structure dates from about 1860; it later served Alfred Munnings as a studio. Its date places it well after Stubbs’s painting, while its recorded function helps explain a kind of building closely associated with the training grounds. Sheltered handling was part of the same working routine as exertion on open ground. ^[20]

In the painting, the dark entrance is large enough to compete with the horse as an area of deep tone. The smaller window is set higher, near the level of the muzzle. These two openings punctuate the otherwise broad wall. Neither contains another figure. The rider and horse remain outside, fully exposed to the changing light, while the interior is withheld from view. The building’s presence gives the still pair a destination within the composition without requiring Stubbs to show the work performed inside it. ^[15]

Otho at stud

Pick places Otho in Lord Ossory’s private stud at Ampthill before 1778. He then records a fee of twenty guineas, with an additional ten shillings and sixpence, and a reduction to five guineas plus the same addition in 1780, continuing through 1784. His list of offspring includes Dorimant. The horse’s life after racing had its own changing arrangements and valuations. ^[19]

An earlier account gives another glimpse of that breeding career. The Sporting Magazine reported in November 1796 that Otho had subscribers for forty mares at twenty-five guineas each at Ampthill Park in 1777. It also celebrated him as Dorimant’s sire. This dated report places breeding alongside remembered racing achievements: the audience was offered a horse whose importance extended beyond the seasons in which he ran. ^[21]

Otho in print

The November 1796 magazine advertised a portrait of Otho and described it as taken from a Stubbs painting in the Earl of Upper Ossory’s possession. The accompanying plate carries a separate publication date, 1 December 1796, and names J. Wheble of Warwick Court as publisher. ^{[21] [22]} The printed image carries forward the mounted pair, the building at the right and the distant spire. It provided another way for this composition to reach people interested in the horse. ^[22]

In the print, dark strokes replace the painting’s warm modelling of the coat. Fine, nearly parallel marks cross the sky, while denser lines build the clouds. The horse’s dark mass stands against these lighter bands, and the rider’s pale stocking remains a conspicuous interruption near the centre. On the building, repeated horizontal and vertical marks make the brickwork particularly emphatic. The large black doorway continues to answer the dark horse, but the difference between warm sunlight and cool cloud has become a contrast between densities of printed marks. ^[22]

The foreground changes in a similar way. Short, irregular strokes describe the grass, while longer bands follow the rising land behind the horse. The spire stays clear as a slender vertical between the head and roof. The translation preserves the arrangement of the principal forms, yet encourages a different kind of looking: the eye follows cut lines and their intersections where the painting offers transitions of colour and tone. ^[22]

Collecting and reinterpreting Otho

Later collection history survives in scattered references. A Sotheby’s catalogue of 2014 mentions the Tate Otho among works by Stubbs acquired from the Earl of Upper Ossory’s collection by the Monson family. The reference occurs in the provenance of a different sporting picture, rather than as a complete account of Otho’s ownership. ^[23] It helps place the painting within a collecting network that also valued other portraits of horses and their attendants.

Paul Mellon presented Otho to Tate through the British Sporting Art Trust in 1979. ^[1] The Frick included it in its 2007 celebration of Stubbs. ^[17] A work associated with a particular racing community could consequently be encountered as part of the artist’s wider achievement in painting.

Responses to the rider can be strikingly personal. Reviewing the 1985 Yale exhibition, Sanford Schwartz thought Larkin seemed ‘sweet but weak’. He also stressed the force of Stubbs’s individual human portraits within apparently conventional sporting subjects. ^[24] His reaction belongs to the painting’s reception: it reveals how readily a viewer can read character into a small face without establishing the sitter’s actual temperament.

The composition has also prompted transformation by another artist. The University of Essex records Amador Perez’s Drawing I of 1986, a work based on Stubbs’s Otho, with John Larkin up. ^{[25] [26]} In a 2014 teaching account, Valerie Fraser described students finding suggestions of Pegasus and Sagittarius in Perez’s reworkings. She understood these mythological associations as extensions of the speed, power and partnership involved in racing. ^[25] The eighteenth-century mounted portrait could become material for new images and new conversations about the relationship between a horse and its rider.