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George Stubbs Horse attacked
by a lion From the early 1760s to the 1790s, Stubbs returned again and again to the theme of horses stalked and attacked by lions. In his hands the encounter takes on the high, elemental drama of a scene from myth, suggesting the struggle of good against evil, beauty against ugliness, civilization against savagery. The simple, relief-like design brings this out in oppositions of form and tone: placed right above the graceful hind leg of the horse, for instance, the lion's leg reads like a dark, demonic mockery. This is one of Stubbs's earliest, and certainly his largest essay in the horse-and-lion type of subject. It was commissioned by the young Charles Watson Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, a major figure in the worlds of horseracing and Whig politics, for his London residence at 4 Grosvenor Square. Rockingham also commissioned the pendant painting of a lion attacking a stag, which Stubbs painted a few years later. |