George Stubbs

1724 - 1806 • English • Painter • Romantic

"Nature was and always is superior to Art , whether Greek or Roman." - George Stubbs

While GAINSBOROUGH and REYNOLDS painted portraits of English aristocracy, Stubbs painted their horses. An authority on anatomy and a superb, self-taught technician, he first made his living painting people. Then, after travel through Italy and avid studies of anatomy that included dissecting horses, he carved a unique and very successful niche; his clients included every nobleman and member of the royal family who owned a horse. Sometimes he also painted the horses' owners, grooms, or coachmen. One of his triumphs is Hambeltonian, Rubbing Down, shown at the Royal Academy in 1800. The horse is portrayed just after winning in a spectacular finish an especially grueling race. The owner holds the reins, the young groom a towel, and one cannot but notice how the human figures are diminished in relation to the heroic horse. Elected an associate member of the Royal Academy, Stubbs did not become a full member because he never found time to paint the "presentation picture" that full membership required. As were FLAXMAN and Joseph WRIGHT of Derby, Stubbs was commissioned by Josiah Wedgwood, the innovative and successful pottery manufacturer, to execute designs for production. Another of his clients, the anatomist John Hunter, engaged Stubbs in 1772 to paint a rhinoceros that belonged to a menagerie in London's Strand. A series of paintings that does not fit easily into Stubbs's oeuvre is Lion Devouring a Horse. He painted at least 17 known versions of a terrified horse with a lion on its back. According to an often repeated anecdote, Stubbs had seen such an attack while stopping in North Africa on his way home from Italy. This may be a fabrication, but he did study the lion in a private menagerie, and deliberately frightened a horse to capture its expression of startled fear. The image of a lion attacking its prey is ancient, but Stubbs's rendering of this uncontrollable violence presages a theme of the ROMANTIC movement.