Otho, with John Larkin up

Otho with John Larkin Up from 1768 by George Stubbs documents a racehorse and its jockey in one of the artist's most characteristic Newmarket compositions. The naming of both horse and jockey reflects the documentary function of such paintings—records of specific racing partnerships commissioned by owners who wished to commemorate particular animals and their principal riders. Otho was a successful racehorse of the period, and his jockey John Larkin was a professional rider of the Newmarket circuit. Stubbs's equine paintings of the 1760s, produced immediately after his Anatomy of the Horse (1766), represent his mature racing style at its most confident: the horses rendered with unprecedented anatomical accuracy, set against the wide East Anglian sky. The work is held at Tate.

The horse and jockey are rendered with Stubbs's precise observation, the proportional relationship between rider and mount carefully calibrated.