Frightened Horses

Sawrey Gilpin was the younger brother of the Reverend William Gilpin (1724-1804), the famous advocate of picturesque beauty. Sawrey worked for the Duke of Cumberland and later the Prince of Wales, and was living in Cumberland Lodge at the time of the Duke’s death in 1765. This painting may have been executed for George III.

From 1769 George Stubbs started treating the subject of threatened and attacked horses, making great play of the contrast between their light-colour and nervous sensibility and the dark mountains and prowling beasts that surround them. He depicted the theme in a variety of media, including enamels and low-relief ceramic plaques. Gilpin here follows Stubbs's lead both in mood and in the way in which the white horse is treated as if carved in marble in low relief.