Turf, with Jockey up, at Newmarket, by George Stubbs, c1766

Turf, with Jockey up, at Newmarket was painted for one of George Stubb's most important early patrons, the young Frederick St.John, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke. Bolingbroke was a member and for a time Steward of the prestigious Jockey Club, and owned a number of the most successful horses of the time, including the famous Gimcrack. He employed Stubbs to paint several of them and the pictures hung at Lydiard Park until the departure of the St.John family in the 1940s.

Turf was a bay colt foaled in 1760 by Match’em out of the Duke of Ancaster’s Starling mare. He raced mostly at Newmarket, and the high point of his career was beating King Herod in a match for a thousand guineas over the Beacon Course on April 4 1766. He was retired as a result of lameness just a year later. The identity of the jockey is un­known; he wears Bolingbroke’s colors of a black jacket and cap with buff breeches.

The brick building to the right is a rubbing-down house, a shed in which the stable lads would wipe off the horses’ sweat with straw or cloths after they had exercised or raced. There were four rubbing-down houses at Newmarket, and the present one seems to have been reserved for horses belonging to royal owners and members of the Jockey Club like Lord Bolingbroke.