Sam Fullbrook Jockey Norman Stephens

This Archibald Prize-winning portrait by Sam Fullbrook of jockey Norman 'Whopper’ Stephens (1931-2019) is now in the collection of the Brisbane Club.

For over 30 years, Sam Fullbrook was a regular in the Archibald Prize, and won the Wynne Prize for landscape painting in 1963 and 1964. Following military service in Palestine and New Guinea during World War II, he trained alongside Fred Williams and John Brack at Melbourne’s National Gallery School under William Dargie. He then spent the 1950s and 1960s travelling and painting across Australia, working as a miner, cane cutter and stockman. Keenly interested in horses, Fullbrook was living in Brisbane in the 1970s when he became a racehorse owner and met veteran jockey Stephens.

Stephens, then 43 years old, had a successful career riding before turning his hand to training. His bantam weight and legendary status earned him the nickname ‘Whopper’. Of his selection, Fullbrook said: ‘Why on earth shouldn’t we have footballers and tram conductors, and so on, as worthy subjects?’