Research Point Assignment 2 - George Stubbs

Mares and Foals in a River Landscape 1763-68

Stubbs’s great anatomical knowledge combined with precise draughtsmanlike skill in portraiture has earned him the accolade of being known arguably as "the greatest painter-scientist in the history of art".
He had a passion for anatomy since childhood, but his life is poorly documented up to his mid-thirties. Amongst his earliest surviving works are illustrations in a textbook on midwifery, for a Doctor who worked at York County Hospital, where Stubbs studied human anatomy.
After visiting Rome in 1754, he spent 18 months in Lincolnshire dissecting and drawing horses. Following this, in 1766, after moving to London he published the book The Anatomy of the Horse. Because he was unable to find an engraver to make the plates, he made them himself. The book was a great success and demand for his drawings grew enormously.
His ability to depict equine subjects with beauty and grace without sentimentalizing them was equaled by his command of anatomy. His paintings became generally recognized as being more accurate than that of any of his horse painting predecessors and his range of feeling was wide ranging, from the relative calm of ‘Mares and Foals in a River Landscape’ to a series of pictures of a horse being attacked by a lion.
Apart from horses he also painted many other animals, including tigers, giraffes, rhinoceros, a zebra and numerous dogs.
His last project was begun in 1795 – A Comparative Anatomical Exposition of the Structure of the Human Body with That of a Tiger and a Common Fowl (15 engravings) which, on his death in 1806 was left unfinished. Equestrian art is now held in higher regard than in Stubbs’s day, and he is now generally regarded as the best painter of horses in British Art.