Whistlejacket

What’s it worth?

WE don’t really know how much the Marquess of Rockingham paid Stubbs for his portrait of Whistlejacket; Stubbs left very little paperwork, and he painted several pictures for Rockingham that year. A receipt dated 30 December 1862 for 80 guineas for two paintings, one a horse “as large as Life”, may give us a clue, but not much of one.

However, we do know that Rockingham’s heirs, the Fitzwilliam family, eventually sold Whistlejacket in 1997 to the National Gallery for £11m.

Stubbs’ work has rocketed in price in recent decades, as has much that can be termed “sporting art”. The record at auction stands at an extraordinary £22.4m, which is what Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath fetched at Christie’s in 2011.

'A PORTRAIT of an animal on the scale usually reserved for kings,” said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian in 2000.

George Stubbs’ monumental picture (pictured, left) is indeed the equine version