Hollyhock

Hollyhock from 1768 by George Stubbs is an individual horse portrait documenting a named animal in one of the stable formats that formed the core of his commercial output. The horse's name—a flowering plant—was a common type of equine name in the period, when racehorses and hunters were often named after flowers, places, or literary references. Stubbs's individual horse portraits were made from direct observation of the specific animal, each painting a unique record of a particular horse's conformation, coloring, and bearing, comparable in function to the individual human portrait. His 1768 production represents the busiest period of his early career success following the publication of the Anatomy of the Horse in 1766, when commissions from the racing and hunting establishment were arriving in volume. The work is held at the Royal Collection.

The horse is rendered with Stubbs's characteristic anatomical exactitude, the individual animal's conformation carefully documented.