The major sponsor of the show, Yorkshire property developer Kevin Linfoot, wanted to commission a modern piece to sit alongside the elegant, almost breathing horse flesh painted more than two centuries ago by the master.

He went to contemporary artist Jason Brooks, giving him carte blanche to make something that would later find a home in Linfoot's own impressive collection.

Brooks, who's from Rotherham and trained at Cheltenham and Chelsea colleges of art, says his choice of subject matter – a dead horse with its fetlock stripped open as in a dissection – was not meant to shock.

"I've always been fascinated by Stubbs. He's the best equine artist there has ever been without a doubt.

"In my work I explore the funereal, the fugitive aspects of art, looking at the subject in a forensic way. I like to put detail in, rather than stripping it away. I was trying to make something that was potentially disturbing, but being in black and white it transcends gore and mawkishness. It's a response to Stubbs' anatomical knowledge of the horse. I'm not interested in shocking people."

As Stubbs himself did so many years ago, Brooks observed the work of pathologists and surgeons at the Royal Liverpool Equine Hospital in preparation for painting Horse, which is about the same size as the immense Scrub and Whistlejacket which form the centrepiece of the exhibition.

Brooks' portfolio of work is broad and his stock is high – his recent portrait of Nobel Prize-winning cancer scientist Sir Paul Nurse hangs in the National Portrait Gallery and his work can be seen in collections abroad as well as at Harewood House, Liverpool's Walker Gallery and the Saatchi Collection, London – but being asked to hang a piece alongside Stubbs was "a unique privilege and rather daunting," he says.

"The important thing is to do something that transcends time. Having studied equine anatomy so closely, it may be the start of a series of works. I do things that engage me and don't tend to do commissions. No compromise is what I'm about."

Whistlejacket and Scrub: Large as Life is at Leeds Art Gallery until November 9.