Stubbs, Geokge

, a celebrated anatomist and painter of animals, was born at Liverpool in 1724-, and at the age of thirty went to Rome for improvement in his studies, but | why is not easily accounted for; London was the best theatre to exercise his talents for the dissection and the portraiture of animals, of horses (which he chiefly excelled in) especially, and in London he fixed his residence. That his skill in comparative anatomy never suggested to him the propriety of style in forms, if it were not eminently proved by his Phaeton with the Horses of the Sun, would be evident from all his other figures, which, when human, are seldom more than the attendants of some animal, whilst the style of the animals themselves depended entirely on the individual before him: his tiger for grandeur has never been equalled; his lions are to those of Rubens what jackals are to lions; but none ever did greater justice to the peculiar structure of that artificial animal, the race courser, and to all the mysteries of turf- tactics, though, unfortunately for the artist, they depend more on the fac-similist’s precision than the painter’s spirit. Stubbs was perhaps the first who painted in enamel on a large scale. He was an associate of the Royal Academy, and died in 1806. He published a work, completed in 1766, under the title of “The Anatomy of the Horse including a particular description of the bones, cartilages, muscles, fascias, ligaments, nerves, arteries, veins, and glands; in eighteen tables from nature:” and before his death three numbers of another work, which was to have consisted of six, entitled “A Comparative Anatomical Exposition of the structure of the Human Body with that of a Tiger and a common Fowl, in thirty tables.”!¹