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George Stubb, Mares and Foals without a Background, c. 1762.
Oil on canvas. Private Collection.

and
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background, the horse rises onto its hind legs, his face angled towards used by French art critics in the 1830s as a derogatory term to describe
us as though aware of our gaze. animal artists like Jules Moigniez and Antione-Louis Barye who prima-
This painting, along with Mares and Foals Without a Background, rily worked in the medium of sculpture.
also painted at the Rockingham estate, combines the best of Stubbs’ In George Stubbs’ day, he was hailed as a great scientific painter but
training as an anatomist with his talent as an artist. By forgoing the not as a fine artist. But to Stubbs, depicting animals and their anatomy
traditional landscape background, the viewer is left to marvel at these did not make him any less of an artist. Even in Anatomy of the Horse,
majestic creatures. The vertical orientation of the canvas and the he referred to himself as simply “George Stubbs, painter.” This
monumental scale of the painting drew comparisons to depictions of identification would prove to be true, as Stubbs is now considered an
royalty. These paintings demonstrate that Stubbs was no mere painter important figure in the artistic evolution from the eighteenth-century
of horses, but an accomplished master of his art. focus on scale, proportion, and realism to the heightened drama and
emotion of early 19th century Romanticism.
As his career progressed, Stubbs experimented with the tone,
An Outsider Artist framing, and technique, using the realism of his animal subjects to
ground his more progressive artistic choices. The best example of this is
By the 1760s, George Stubbs had essentially cornered the market on Lion Attacking a Horse, a painting
animal paintings in England, gaining a Stubbs first presented to the Royal
steady income from his portraits. He also Academy in 1763. The painting depicts
became known for his “conversation George Stubbs, Whistlejacket, c.1762, a fantastical scene: a fearsome lion
pieces,” depicting members of the gentry Oil on Canvas, National Gallery, London grappling the back of a white stallion,
participating in outdoor activities such as tearing into its flesh. The horse rears in
hunting, picnicking, or promenading. panic, eyes bulging, as it attempts to flee.
These paintings often featured fancy pets Stubbs created about seventeen
like dogs and falcons. Occasionally, he versions of this subject throughout his
painted the exotic animals he saw in pri- career, adjusting the color or position to
vate menageries, such as lions, monkeys, the animals to make each one slightly
and giraffes. different. It is unknown why he was
Yet, Stubbs’ success as a painter did drawn to this specific subject. Scholars
not mean he was fully accepted by his posit that Stubbs was inspired by the
artistic contemporaries. Though he exotic animals on his journeys through
professionally came of age in a time North Africa during his early life or was
before the Royal Academy of Arts was motivated by similar scenes in Roman
founded in 1768, the esteemed institu- and Greek sculpture. He prepared for
tion soon imposed a rigid hierarchy on the challenge of rendering such a
the fine arts. To painters in the academic technically intricate scene by studying
tradition, such as Thomas Gainsborough the lions at the Tower of London and
and Benjamin West, animal paintings those in private menageries.
were considered an inferior genre Contemporaries acknowledged that
compared to subjects like classical histo- Stubbs maintained his adherence to
ry and the emulation of the Old Masters. anatomical realism and proportion.
This opinion would persist in Europe The most novel interpretation of
into the early nineteenth century, so this painting was not in its subject but in
much so that the term Animalier was first
its medium. Not only did Stubbs

34 Journal of Antiques and Collectibles