Stubbs, George

Stubbs, George (1724-1806), English painter and engraver who specialized in animal subjects and is generally regarded as the greatest of all horse painters.

Stubbs was born in Liverpool on August 25, 1724, the son of a currier. As a boy he worked in his father’s trade, but he had a passion for drawing. When his father died in 1741, Stubbs—now aged 17—decided to make art his profession. He worked briefly as an assistant to the painter Hamlet Winstanley, but mainly taught himself, supported by his mother. He also learnt about animal anatomy by dissecting horses and dogs.

From 1745 to 1753 Stubbs lived in York. Little is known in detail about his career at this time in his life, but initially he seems to have earned his living mainly as a portraitist while pursuing his own studies in anatomy. In 1751 he gave the first demonstration of his skill as an anatomist with his engraved illustrations to a medical treatise, John Burton’s Essay Towards a Complete New System of Midwifery.

In 1754 Stubbs briefly visited Italy, then worked in Liverpool for the next two years. In 1756 he moved to Horkstow in Lincolnshire, a fairly isolated place where he could carry out his dissecting work without causing disgust among his neighbours. He now had a plan to produce a book on the anatomy of the horse, and for this he needed prolonged, intensive work on carcasses. During about 18 months of this activity he again supported himself and his family by painting portraits. He now had a common-law wife, Mary Spencer, and a son, George Townly Stubbs, who later became an engraver and produced many prints of his father’s work. Another child, Mary, died in infancy.

In 1758 Stubbs moved to London, where he hoped to find an engraver for his anatomical drawings. He lived in London for the rest of his life. Stubbs failed to find a suitable engraver for his drawings, so he did the work himself, and in 1766 he at last published his famous book, The Anatomy of the Horse. He had already begun to make a name for himself as a painter and the book’s magnificent illustrations set the seal on his reputation.

Stubbs produced many different types of painting involving horses, including racing and hunting scenes, portraits of famous racehorses—for example Otho, With John Larkin Up (1768, Tate Gallery, London) and family groups in which people are arranged around a carriage. In mood his paintings varied from idyllic scenes of mares and foals in serene landscapes—for example Mares and Foals in a Landscape (c. 1763-1768, Tate Gallery, London)—to highly dramatic images of a lion attacking a horse. He produced several paintings on the theme of a horse being attacked or startled by a lion, for example Lion Attacking a Horse (c. 1762; Yale Center for British Art) and White Horse Frightened by a Lion, of which several versions exist. He is said to have witnessed such a scene in Morocco on his return from Italy, although the real inspiration was probably a famous ancient sculpture of the subject, which he no doubt saw in Rome. Stubbs also painted many other animals, including a variety of dogs (which the aristocracy loved almost as much as horses) and several exotic species, notably a moose and a rhinoceros (such animals were occasionally exhibited in Britain as curiosities).

Stubbs’s patrons included the Prince of Wales (later George IV) but, in spite of his renown and the unfailingly high quality of his work, he began to get into financial difficulties in the 1780s. This was mainly because he spent much of his time pursuing financially unrewarding projects, including collaborating with the famous potter Josiah Wedgwood in producing paintings on large enamel plaques rather than canvas. In his final years he relied to a considerable extent on financial support from his friend and patron Isabella Saltonstall. Stubbs died at his home in London on July 10, 1806, aged 81. His artistic powers and scientific curiosity remained undimmed until the end, and at his death he was working on drawings for another major book, A Comparative Anatomical Exposition of the Structure of the Human Body with that of a Tiger and a Common Fowl. Parts of it were published in instalments, but it was never completed.