GEORGE STUBBS, R.A. 20I 



That George Stubbs was superior to all the 

 painters of animals, and more especially of the 

 horse, who preceded him is a statement on which 

 it is needless to insist ; and if he has been equalled 

 since, he has never been excelled, by painters who 

 have had the enormous advantage of his anatomical 

 and artistic labours to aid their studies. John 

 Landseer, the engraver, in his Carnivorous Quad- 

 rupeds, gives Stubbs the place of honour in a com- 

 parison of his work with the animal paintings of 

 Rubens, Rembrandt, Reydinger, Spilsbury and 

 Edwin Landseer. Mr. Joseph Mayer, F.S.A., 

 sums up his merits so ably that we cannot do better 

 than quote from his careful and discriminating 

 pages :— 



He who knows what manner of beast was given EngHsh- 

 men to admire before Stubbs' day best recognises what we 

 owe him. His obstinacy in rejecting the models of other men 

 saved him from falhng into the exaggerations of any school. 

 . . . Stubbs was the first to paint animals as they are. 

 No temptation led him to invent a muscle, nor did he put his 

 creatures into an attitude. They are always as nature made, 

 with their own shapes, gestures and expressions, often ugly, 

 but always true. 



" Anthony Pasquin " who, in his Memoirs of the 

 Royal Acadejiticians (London, 1796), disparaged 

 when he could and praised only when he must, 

 gave cordial approval to the work of Stubbs. 

 " He has become," says this exacting critic, 

 "by his genius and his researches the example 



