Gimcrack, with John Pratt up, on Newmarket Heath

Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath with John Pratt Up from 1765 by George Stubbs is one of two celebrated paintings Stubbs made of the famous grey racehorse, who became something of a cult figure in Georgian racing culture. Gimcrack ran twenty-seven of his thirty-five starts and became a symbol of English thoroughbred racing excellence. Newmarket Heath, the great flat landscape of East Anglia that was the headquarters of English racing, provided Stubbs with one of his most characteristic settings—a wide sky, flat ground, and the distant shapes of the racing establishment buildings giving documentary authenticity to equine portraits made there. This version, at the Fitzwilliam Museum, shows the horse with his jockey and captures the animal's remarkable grey coat with anatomical precision born from Stubbs's dissection studies.

The racehorse is depicted with characteristic anatomical exactitude, the Newmarket landscape providing the authentic racing context.