George Stubbs is best-known as the supreme animal painter in British art. His remarkable ability in painting the horse was the result of laborious study and anatomical dissections. His observations were published in The Anatomy of the Horse in 1766. As well as his many fine equestrian portraits, emphasising the bloodlines and markings of Thoroughbred horses, Stubbs also painted some more exotic animals, including the Yak and Rhinoceros, on loan from the Royal College of Surgeons.

In the eighteenth century, the painting of animals was considered a rather lowly branch of art. Stubbs’s scientific approach and his carefully ordered compositions can be seen as an attempt to raise the status of his art to a more intellectual plane. His subject-matter was similarly elevated through his group of works on the dramatic ‘horse and lion’ theme, inspired by an antique marble statue that Stubbs had seen in Rome in 1754. The series introduced a narrative and philosophical element in illustrating the tragic event of the attack on a passive horse by a wild lion.

Stubbs was an artist preoccupied with experimentalism, in his subject-matter, compositions and artistic techniques. His radical innovations included painting in enamels on copper or ceramic tablets, and using an unusual variety of print-making methods.

This display has been devised by curator Diane Perkins

British Art Displays 1500-2004