In London, the unsurpassed animal paintings of George Stubbs
Throughout his long life, and for 150 years after his death, George Stubbs (1724-1806) was known as a horse painter. Never mind the Parthenon frieze, the Marcus Aurelius, the equestrian portraits of Verrocchio or Donatello, or any of the rest of the vast repertory of equine imagery in Western art: horse painting, like "sporting" art generally, tends to be seen as a minor style of aesthetic tailoring, shaped to reflect the blunt amusements of a class not much liked by connoisseurs. Painters like Sir Alfred Munnings, who filled canvas after canvas with accurate replications of poised fetlocks and lobb boots, are despised by art critics; and even in the 18th century, the age of the horse par excellence, Stubbs' attainments were looked down on by his fellow painters.
Today one sees him differently, not just as an animalier but as an artist of the whole rural scene, including its people. Stubbs had a haunted, driven side, and its combination with his visions of social tranquillity was like nothing else in 18th century art. His anatomical studies of the horse, dense with thought and laden with death, rivaled Leonardo's anatomies and, like them, came from grueling years of dissection and observation. His variations on a favorite subject, the white horse neighing in anguish as it is mauled by a lion in the wilderness, are among the archetypes of romantic imagination, comparable in intensity to Goya or Gericault. Finally, he was a minute and sympathetic watcher at the human theater of the English class system.
In sum, Stubbs was not just an interesting minor artist but a thoroughly absorbing one who often rose to greatness—as well as the best horse painter who ever lived. And since the exhibition of his work that opened Oct. 17 at London's Tate Gallery—102 paintings along with 77 drawings and prints—will go, with some substitutions and deletions, to the Yale Center for British Art in February, American museumgoers will be able to test for themselves the feeling, now spreading in England, that Stubbs is to be ranked with Turner and Constable in English painting. Whether one feels this or not, the show, curated by Art Historian Judy Egerton, is a revelation.
Stubbs lived at a time of intense curiosity about the animal world. Strange creatures and people from the corners of a growing empire drew crowds when they were put on show in rented London rooms; photography had not made all things familiar. The wonders of Africa, America and the Pacific glared peevishly back at the Georgian dilettanti from their wooden dens and dirty straw. "Just arrived from Botany-Bay," ran a newspaper advertisement in 1789, "three new live animals for the amusement of the public, with that 3 singular animal the African Savage, a noble Lion and Lioness, a pair of 3 beautiful Leopards, a Lynx, a Sangwin, the Arabian nightwalker ... the Spotted Negro attends from eleven to seven in the evening."