The Godolphin Arabian – 1794 Original Engraving
AED16,500
A rare original 1794 engraving of the Goldophin Arabian, after which the Maktoum family stables in Dubai are named.
Engraved by George Townley Stubbs (1748-1815?) after a painting by his father George Stubbs (1724-1806), the eminent British painter of horses and other animals.
Copper engraving with stipple, in very good condition, sized 235x260mm.
The Godolphin Arabian (c1724-53) was an Arabian Horse, originally foaled in Yemen, and one of three stallions that are the source of the Thoroughbred horse breed (the other two are the Byerley Turk and the Darley Arabian). The Godolphin Arabian was given by the Bey of Tunis to King Louis XV of France in 1730, then imported to England, entering the stud of Francis Godolphin, 2nd Earl of Godolphin, in Babraham near Newmarket in Cambridgeshire, in 1733.
The Godolphin Arabian was the leading sire in England in 1738, 1745 and 1747, and is an ancestor of many modern thoroughbreds, particularly in the United States.
The horse was described the Vicomte de Manty thus: “He was of beautiful conformation, exquisitely proportioned with large hocks, well let down, with legs of iron, with unequalled lightness of forehand – a horse of incomparable beauty whose only flaw was being headstrong. An essentially strong stallion type, his quarters broad in spite of beign half starved, tail carried in true Arabian style.”
The contemporary veterinary surgeon Osmer described him: “There never was a horse (at least, that I have seen) so well entitled to get racers as the Godolphin Arabian; for, whoever has seen this horse must remember that his shoulders were deeper, and lay farther into his back, than those of any horse ever yet seen. Behind the shoulders, there was but a very small space ere the muscles of his loins rose exceedingly high, broad, and expanded, which were inserted into his hindquarters with greater strength and power than in any horse I believe ever yet seen of his dimensions, viz fifteen hands high.”
Mounted with a dark green and beige trim, presented in a matt gold-coloured wood frame.
