Newmarket Heath, with the King's stables rubbing house at the finish of the Beacon Course

Stubbs's Newmarket Heath with the King's Stables from 1765 depicts the famous racecourse that was the center of English thoroughbred racing culture and the sporting venue most frequented by aristocratic patrons whose commissions sustained Stubbs's career. Newmarket had been the royal racing center since Charles II, and its stable blocks, training gallops, and viewing stands were as familiar to the aristocratic world Stubbs served as the London drawing rooms where his paintings hung. The combination of architectural documentation—the rubbing house where horses were cooled down after racing—with the open heathland setting gave Stubbs a subject that combined the equestrian precision of his animal painting with topographical accuracy and the social prestige of racing culture's most celebrated venue. His Newmarket paintings served as visual documentation of a world his aristocratic patrons inhabited and cherished.

The horses and riders are rendered with the anatomical precision that distinguished Stubbs from all other sporting painters. The broad, flat landscape of Newmarket Heath provides a stage that emphasizes the elegant proportions of the thoroughbreds.