After George Stubbs

The grey thoroughbred racehorse and stud, Mambrino, was foaled in 1768 by John Atkinson Scholes of York out of Engineer and an unnamed Cade mare. His racing career of five years (1773–1778) was marked by significant success; he ‘was beat only four times’.¹ Purchased by the 1^st Earl Grosvenor in 1777, Mambrino went on to become a highly profitable stud, siring not only racehorses but ‘a great many excellent hunters’ and ‘strong useful Road Horses’.²

The present painting is a copy of a work by George Stubbs, commissioned by Lord Grosvenor in 1779, and now in private ownership.³ Stubbs would paint Mambrino a second time for his Review of the Turf series of famous racehorse portraits, this time with significant changes to the landscape.⁴ Both paintings were later engraved in 1794.⁵

¹ W. Pick, The Turf Register, York 1805, vol. II, p. 266.

² Pick 1805, p. 266.

³ J. Egerton, George Stubbs, Painter, New Haven and London 2007, p. 422, no. 215, reproduced in colour.

⁴ Egerton 2007, p. 558, no. 317, reproduced.

⁵ C. Lennox-Boyd, R. Dixon and T. Clayton, George Stubbs: The Complete Engraved Works, London, 1989, pp. 246–47.