A Horse Affrighted by a Lion
<p>George Stubbs specialized in painting horses, and he frequently invested his compositions with Romantic flair by including ravenous predators and dark and stormy vistas. As seen here, his prints offered appropriately stark contrasts for these imaginative subjects while maintaining a sense of the dramatic; yet his practice of animal portraiture was in fact based on close anatomical study. His oversize 1766 book <em>Anatomy of the Horse</em> included a series of crosssection prints of horses in various poses, showing every layer from a horse’s silky hide to its skeleton.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1777
- Dimensions
- Image: 34.1 × 45.9 cm (13 7/16 × 18 1/8 in.); Sheet: 36.5 × 47.7 cm (14 3/8 × 18 13/16 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- George Stubbs
Artist
Printmaking
George Stubbs was an English painter and anatomist renowned for his precisely observed paintings of horses, often set within refined landscapes or aristocratic settings. Working in the eighteenth century, he combined meticulous naturalism with classical composition, elevating the animal portrait to a form of high art. His anatomical studies, informed by direct dissection and skeletal analysis, distinguished his work from contemporary horse painters and established him as a master of equine representation. Stubbs also painted portraits and historical subjects, but his legacy rests primarily on paintings that married scientific accuracy with aristocratic sensibility.
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More by George Stubbs
A Couple of Foxhounds
1792 · Oil paint on canvas
Reapers
1791 · stipple and roulette on laid paper
Hay-Makers
1791 · Stipple engraving, with roulette, on ivory laid paper
Reapers
1791 · Engraving on paper
Labourers
1789 · Etching, with stipple engraving, roulette, rocker and burnishing, on ivory wove paper
Labourers
1789 · mezzotint
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- George Stubbs
- Year
- 1777
- Dimensions
- Image: 34.1 × 45.9 cm (13 7/16 × 18 1/8 in.); Sheet: 36.5 × 47.7 cm (14 3/8 × 18 13/16 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1777-088946
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified