Archive for the ‘Horse Paintings’ Category
George Stubbs was an English artist famous for his pictures of sporting subjects, and for his portraits of the most celebrated racehorses of his time, which he not only designed with correctness, but with a characteristic spirit, for which he was particularly distinguished.
George Edward Stubbs was born at Liverpool, August 24, 1724. His father was a considerable currier and leather-dresser, a career path not favored by Stubbs.
The bent of a painter’s genius shows itself at an early age, but seldom, probably, in a form as practical as did that of Stubbs. When scarcely eight years old, little George began to study anatomy. Dr. Holt, a neighbor, lent him bones and prepared subjects, from which he took drawings.
This early occupation led him down two paths. He did not paint racehorses alone, nor was he only a painter. He was also qualified to give lectures on anatomy at York Hospital before he reached his twenty- second year. He had great scientific knowledge, and skill in displaying it.
Most young artists learn by copying masterpieces, a practice George objected to. He never copied any single picture throughout his long life. Nature was his only study, and experience his master.
Around 1757, Stubbs could be found energetically preparing for his great work on the ‘Anatomy of the Horse.’ This work had long been present in Stubbs’ mind and upon it will rest his highest fame.
After eighteen long months of labor, he took his drawings to London, where he hoped to find an engraver for them. None would take the commission though and Stubbs spent the next 6 or 7 years doing the engravings himself. ‘Anatomy of the Horse‘ finally appeared in 1766.
More than any other thing, the book tended to throw him into horse painting, and to this he ascribes entirely his being a horse painter.
Stubbs was 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. His command of the brush was remarkable, both in landscape and in painting texture.
The following story is a strong testament to Stubbs’ amazing artistic ability:
For the Marquis of Rockingham, at Wentworth House, Stubbs painted a life-size portrait of Whistlejacket, a yellow-sorrel horse, with white mane and tail. The Marquis had intended to employ some eminent painter of portraits to add a likeness of King George the Third sitting on Whistlejacket’s back, and some landscape painter of equal excellence to execute the background.
This idea, however, was abandoned under circumstances very flattering to the artist.
Whistlejacket had a temper so savage that only one man could be trusted to take him to and from his stable. The last sitting proved to be shorter than Stubbs had expected, and his work was finished before the time fixed for this man to come as usual, and lead the horse away. Whilst the boy in charge of him waited, Stubbs put his work in a good light and observed its effect, as artists do.
The boy, who was leading Whistlejacket up and down, called out suddenly, and, turning, Stubbs saw the horse staring at his own portrait and quivering with rage. He sprang forward to attack it, rearing, and lifting the boy off his legs.
Very hard work they had to preserve the picture. When the Marquis heard this story, it pleased him so much that he would not allow a single touch to be added, but framed and hung the painting without a background.
The artist, Rosa Bonheur achieved fame in France with her paintings, drawings and sculpture that were exhibited at the annual Salons since 1841. But with the Horse Fair, which appeared at the Salon in Paris in 1853, she made a world-wide reputation.
The Horse Fair measures eight feet high by sixteen feet wide. Its subject is the horse market held in Paris on the tree-lined boulevard de l’Hôpital, near the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital.
The making of the Horse Fair painting:
The story of the painting of the picture is well known; how day after day for months a shock headed boy in a blouse was seen sketching amongst the horses being brought to the Paris horse fair to be sold, or chatting with the drivers about their charges, moving here, there, and everywhere amongst a set of the lowest men imaginable.
The bravery of Rosa Bonheur in thus penetrating into a world which held many dangers for a woman, so ably disguised that her sex was never suspected, added to the interest excited by the picture, and the Salon was crowded day after day.
There are five versions of The Horse Fair. The original at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; the first reduced copy, which served for the first engraving, at the National Gallery in London; the second reduction in a private collection in England; the small water-colour at Middlesbrough ; and the drawing belonging to the estate of M. Gambard.
It is one of the best known pictures of modern times, and has made her name a household word to thousands who have no knowledge that its author ever painted another picture.
