Lustre, held by a Groom, by George Stubbs, c1762

The following commentary is provided for the painting by the Yale Center of British Art:

'This is probably the first of at least ten paintings that George Stubbs made for the racing enthusiast Frederick St. John, second Viscount Bolingbroke, profligate heir to a great fortune (another, Turf, with Jockey Up, is shown nearby). Bolingbroke may have commissioned it after becoming familiar with similar pictures of racehorses by Stubbs at Althorp, home to his unloved and unfaithful wife, Lady Diana Spencer. Although of illustrious parentage, Lustre was not a winning racehorse and enjoyed only one successful season in 1760 before Bolingbroke sold him in 1762. Lustre nonetheless inspired this exceptional picture in which a liveried groom leads the horse through a rolling landscape beneath a turbulent sky, the setting perhaps intended for Bolingbroke’s estate at Lydiard Tregoze in Wiltshire.'