Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/120

Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie cumstances. Shortly afterwards George was engaged by Hamlet Winstanley to assist in copying pictures at Knowsley Hall, the seat of the Earl of Derby. He was to receive instruction, a shilling a day, and the choice of pictures to copy; but Winstanley afterwards refused to let him copy the pictures he chose, and they quarrelled, Stubbs declaring that ‘henceforward he would look into nature for himself, and consult and copy her only.’ He lived with his mother at Liverpool till he was twenty. He then went to Wigan, and stayed seven or eight months with Captain Blackbourne, who took a great fancy to him from his likeness to a son whom he had lately lost. After a brief residence in Leeds, where he painted portraits, he moved to York, where he studied anatomy under Charles Atkinson, and gave lectures upon it to the students in the hospital. He also learnt fencing and French and maintained himself by his profession. Being requested by Dr. John Burton to illustrate his ‘Essay towards a complete new System of Midwifery’ (published 1756), he taught himself etching, and executed eighteen small copperplates (a copy of the book, with the etchings, is in the library of the Royal College of Surgeons). From York he removed to Hull, where he painted and dissected with his usual assiduity, and after a short visit to Liverpool set sail for Italy in 1754, in order to find out whether nature was superior to art. He went by sea to Leghorn, and thence to Rome, where he soon decided in favour of nature, and was noted for the strength and originality of his opinions, which differed from those of everybody else. Though he did not copy any pictures, he made many sketches from nature and life.

While in Italy he made friends with an educated Moor, who took him to his father's house at Ceuta, from the walls of which, or of another African town, he saw a lion stalk and seize a white Barbary horse about two hundred yards from the moat. This incident formed the subject of many of his pictures. On his return he settled at Liverpool for a while, and after his mother's death came to London in 1756, visiting Lincolnshire on the way to paint portraits for Lady Nelthorpe. He had now a considerable reputation, and charged one hundred guineas for the portrait of a horse. This was the price paid him by Sir Joshua Reynolds for a picture of ‘The Managed Horse.’ In 1758 he took a farmhouse near Barton, Lincolnshire, where he began preparations for his great work on the ‘Anatomy of the Horse,’ at which he was engaged for eighteen months, with no other companion than his niece, Miss Mary Spencer. He erected an apparatus by which he could suspend the body of a dead horse and alter the limbs to any position, as if in motion. He laid bare each layer of muscles one after the other until the skeleton was reached, and made complete and careful drawings of all. A great many horses were required before he had finished, and he carried the whole work through at his own expense and without assistance. At first he intended to get his drawings engraved by others, but he could not persuade any of the engravers of the day to take up the work, and so determined to execute all the plates with his own hand. This employed his mornings and nights for six or seven years, as he would not encroach on the hours devoted to his ordinary profession of painting. ‘The Anatomy of the Horse’ was published in 1766 by J. Purser (for the author), and had a great success. It was composed of eighteen tables, in folio, illustrated by twenty-four large engraved plates. It was the first to define clearly the structural form of the horse. A second edition was published in 1853, and it is still an acknowledged authority on the subject. The original drawings for the plates were left by Stubbs to Miss Spencer; they afterwards belonged to Sir Edwin and Thomas Landseer, by whom they were highly prized. Thomas Landseer left them to the Royal Academy, in whose library they are now preserved.

Meanwhile Stubbs's reputation as a painter of horses had greatly increased. In 1760 he was at Eaton Hall, painting for Lord Grosvenor; and shortly afterwards he went to Goodwood on receiving a commission from the Duke of Richmond, which is said to have been his first of importance. He stayed at Goodwood for nine months, during which time he executed a large hunting-piece, 9 feet by 6 feet, and many portraits. One of the latter represented the Earl of Albemarle at breakfast the day before he embarked on his expedition to Havana in 1762. This was also the year of his picture of ‘The Grosvenor Hunt,’ in which are introduced portraits of Lord Grosvenor, his brother the Hon. Thomas Grosvenor, Sir Roger Mostyn, and others. He had now joined the Incorporated Society of Artists of which he was treasurer in 1760, and president (for one year) in 1773. He was a constant contributor to the society's exhibitions from 1762 to 1774, and was one of its staunchest supporters. Besides numerous portraits of horses, dogs, and other animals, he ex-