Ben Marshall (Seagrave 1768-1835 London)

Major-General Sir John Malcolm, GCB, KLS (1769-1833) acquired this magnificent grey stallion when its owner, the Pasha of Bagdad, was killed in action. He brought the horse to England and either presented or sold him to H.R.H. The Prince Regent, later George IV, King of the United Kingdom and Hanover. The so-called Malcolm Arabian, as the horse became known, is pictured here rearing in a sun-scorched desert landscape with an equine companion.

A slightly earlier version of this picture, signed and dated 1823, is almost identical to this canvas, with minor differences in the landscape and additional detail in the foreground (see W. S. Sparrow, British Sporting Artists from Barlow to Herring, London, 1922, opposite p. 163). A portrait of the Malcolm Arabian was exhibited by Charles Henry Schwanfelder at the Royal Academy in 1814 and now hangs in the Royal Collection, England; another portrait of the stallion with a groom by Henry Bernard Chalon (dated 1819) is with Simon Dickinson, London and New York.