My kingdom was a horse

At the age of 8, George was really interested in looking at bones. As his father was a currier (a dresser of animal skins) he undoubtedly had access to plenty of material. But this was still an unusual passion for a youngster born in 1724. After working with his father for eight years, it was time for George to strike out on his own and find a teacher.

Charles Atkinson, the surgeon at the county hospital in York, took him on. And, by the time he was 22, George was teaching anatomy to medical students in Hull. He was now doing full body dissections – including a notable example of a deceased pregnant woman – which led to the publication of a set of his illustrations for a midwifery textbook, ‘An Essay Towards a Complete New System of Midwifery’, published in 1751.

However, it was not just human bodies that interested George. His real passion was the study of the anatomy of horses. After spending some time in Italy on the Grand Tour, George set up a ‘dissecting suite’ in a rented farmhouse in Lincolnshire in 1756. Here, assisted by his common-law wife Mary, George spent 18 months exploring the bodies of horses. This resulted in the publication of ‘The Anatomy of the Horse’ in 1766.

In ‘Sensations – The Story of British Art from Hogarth to Banksy’ (2018) by Jonathon Jones, there is a very graphic and macabre description of the method George and Mary used to dissect the twelve horses in their makeshift ‘laboratory’. Live horses were brought in, their throats were slit for a quick death, the blood drained, and then the vascular system was injected with wax. The hardest part was suspending the carcass from an iron bar in the ceiling so that George could flay the hide and explore the animal’s anatomy – which was then uncovered layer by layer. George was an avid experimenter and a keen observer, and he was absolutely determined to depict his observations with a visual accuracy that was almost entirely self-taught.

George Stubbs (1724-1806) was one of the truly great and idiosyncratic artists to come out of England in the 18^th century. Even before his book was published, his twin obsessions, anatomy and art, were recognised by natural scientists and aristocratic patrons (who were keen to have Stubbs paint pictures of their horses).

After the Duke of Richmond commissioned three large works, other aristocrats sought him out and by the 1760s, Stubbs was well-known, well-regarded and well-off. This was a remarkable achievement for a lad from Liverpool who had had minimal formal training as an artist.

However, Stubbs’ interest in the equine and his extraordinary artistic ability had ‘hit the zeitgeist’. As Jones points out: ‘Horse racing had become a national sport that combined many aspects of this complicated society. Spectatorship, horse dealing, race reporting and above all gambling captured the energy of an expanding commercial nation. At the same time aristocratic ownership of famous horses showed who was still in charge’. The same people who commissioned Joshua Reynolds to paint pictures of their wives or mistresses, paid Stubbs to paint their horses. The 2^nd Marquess of Rockingham commissioned what is regarded as Stubbs’ most famous work of a thoroughbred, ’Whistlejacket’, which is now in the National Gallery in London.

However, as Xavier Salomon discussed in the most recent episode of ‘Cocktails with a Curator’ from The Frick Collection, Stubbs also painted portraits, conversation pieces, historical subjects and pictures of exotic animals – including tigers, lemurs, giraffes, and monkeys. See the episode at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71H0vBNyrz8&list=PLNVeJpU2DHHR_0y_Zvgn3MgZQQFcFx2eI&index=2&t=0s

There are four works connected with George Stubbs in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria – two feature a horse threatened by a lion, the other two relate to his picture of a kangaroo.

Stubbs was interested in the notion of animals attacking each other. This is perhaps not surprising given the gusto with which he hoed into dissection. In The Frick video, Salomon shows a picture that relates to a battle between a cheetah and a stag. However, Stubbs’ favourite subject of animals in mortal combat was of a lion and a horse.

Stubbs explored the ‘lion attacking horse theme’ at least seventeen times over thirty years in various media. In the images, he created an episodic narrative over four scenes. Commencing with the horse first scenting the lion’s approach, the horse then recoiling from the confrontation with the lion before the lion leaps on the horse’s back to ultimately kill and devour it.

The theme may have come from the time Stubbs spent in Italy, as his image is strikingly similar to a Roman copy of a Greek sculpture which was in the Palazzo dei Conservatori in Rome.  A more ‘evocative’ (but unlikely) impetus relates to a story published in The Sporting Magazine, May issue, of 1808 in which Stubbs is said to have seen a lion stalking a barbary horse while on a brief stopover in Africa on his way home from Europe.

Nevertheless, in preparation for the works, Stubbs made many studies of caged lions at the Tower of London and at Lord Shelbourne’s menagerie on Hounslow Heath. The subject matter was very popular and demonstrated Stubbs’ skill depicting animals, action and landscape. The horse’s terror, struggle and ultimate submission to his inevitable fate also resonated with the notions of the heroic and the stoic seen in history paintings.

The great 18^th century writer and critic, Horace Walpole, was so impressed with the pictures that he composed a poem ‘On seeing the celebrated Startled Horse, painted by the inimitable Mr. Stubbs’. His reaction to the first painting in the series is expressed in the lines:

There is an excellent essay on Stubbs’ ‘Lion and Horse’ series of paintings by Aris Sarafianos in the Tate Papers. Titled: ‘Stubbs, Walpole and Burke: Convulsive Imitation and ‘Truth Extorted’: The Sublime Object’, in Tate Papers, no. 13, Spring 2010, https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/13/stubbs-walpole-and-burke-convulsive-imitation-and-truth-extorted

Stubbs lived at a time when there was intense curiosity about the animal world. As the British Empire expanded, all manner of strange new creatures drew crowds when they were put on show in London. The most unusual animal that James Cook and Joseph Banks brought back from their 1770 voyage of the Endeavour was the one they called ‘the leaping quadruped’ – soon known by its translated indigenous name ‘kongouro’.

With only limited materials – some skins and skeletons from kangaroos consumed by the explorers, a taxidermy example and studies made by Sydney Parkinson (the ship’s artist) before he died – Stubbs was called in to create an image of the animal. He rose to the challenge and depicted the animal perched on a rock, ears pricked, eyes intense and alert, head turned looking back ‘over its shoulder’ in an imagined New Holland landscape.

The novelty of ‘life downunder’ went viral and Stubbs’ image of ‘kongouro’ was soon copied with engravings appearing in The Gentleman’s Magazine July 1773 and the first edition of ‘An Account of the Voyages Undertaken … for Making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere’ by John Hawkesworth in the same year. The image was so popular that Staffordshire mass-produced mugs and Samuel Johnson is recorded as being so enamoured of the animal that he couldn’t resist imitating it with his brown coat tails gathered up to create a pouch and himself bounding across the room!

This painting, along with ‘Portrait of a Large Dog’ (a painting of a dingo) were exhibited by the Society of Artists in London in 1773. They have the distinction of being the first depictions of Australian animals in Western art and the only two paintings by Stubbs that were not drawn from live subjects. Both paintings were acquired by the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich for a cost of several million dollars in 2013 following failed attempts by the National Gallery in Canberra to purchase them.

Stubbs continued his creative endeavours up to the time of his death at the age of 81 in 1806. Anatomy and art remained his passions and his last project, which he commenced when he was 72 and was incomplete when he died, reminds us of his unusual and enquiring mind. Published posthumously, the 100 drawings and eighteen engravings with text is fittingly titled: ‘A comparative anatomical exposition of the structure of the human body with that of a tiger and a common fowl’.