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"Whistlejacket" c. 1762, oil on canvas, 9.5 x 8 ft.
ŠThe National Gallery of London. Bought with the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund 1997. |
The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, has organized an unique
opportunity to view the works of the great horse painter George Stubbs. The
special exhibition titled Stubbs and the Horse will be at the Kimbell Museum
from November 14, 2004 - February 6, 2005. Following its presentation at the
Kimbell Art Museum, the exhibition will be on view at the Walters Art
Museum, Baltimore, Maryland, March 13-May 29, 2005, and the National
Gallery, London, England, from June 29-September 25, 2005.
George Stubbs (1724-1806) was a versatile artistic genius whose work
includes paintings, prints and detailed anatomical studies. His many images
of horses show a classical beauty, expressiveness and heroism previously
reserved for the human figure. Curated by the Kimbell Art Museum's Malcolm
Warner, Stubbs and the Horse is the first major exhibition to focus on this
central theme in Stubbs' work, from refined portraits of racehorses to
dramatic scenes of horses attacked by lions in the wild, and celebrates the
artist whom many consider to be the greatest painter of horses in the
history of art.
The exhibition's centerpiece is the monumental Whistlejacket, a 9.5 by 8
foot, life-size commissioned oil painting and the most widely admired of
Stubbs' works since its acquisition by the National Gallery in London in
1997. This breathtaking work has never before been seen outside Britain.
Information obtained from www.kimballart.org, the Kimbell Art Museum web
site. Visit their web site for more information.
Bit of History
George Stubbs (1724-1806)
The foundation of Stubbs' career as a painter of horses was his knowledge
of equine anatomy. While in his early 30s, he spent approximately 18 months
dissecting and drawing the bodies of horses at a remote farmhouse in
northern England. Out of his gruesome, messy and unhealthy labors came the
impeccably ordered and beautiful book The Anatomy of the Horse, published in
1766.
Stubbs worked mostly for the horse-loving British nobility and gentry.
Although he took advantage of the burgeoning public art exhibitions in his
lifetime, showing and selling a number of his works at the annual
exhibitions, the mainstay of his patronage was the private commission.
Settling in London at the end of the 1750s, where he lived and worked the
rest of his life, Stubbs attracted commissions from some of the wealthiest
men in Britain.
The Marquess of Rockingham commissioned Stubbs to paint Whistlejacket, a
grandson of the Godolphin Arabian, one of the foundation sires of the
thoroughbred. At first he employed Stubbs to paint this exceptionally
handsome horse in a mere supporting role, as part of a portrait of George
III on horseback. When Rockingham saw what Stubbs had done, however, he
abandoned the plan and had Stubbs complete the work as a portrait of
Whistlejacket, against a plain background, with neither rider nor setting.
The result was more powerful as a work of art than a collaborative
equestrian portrait of the king could possibly have been. It was also a
landmark in the history of mankind's relationship to animals. With its focus
on the horse rather than the rider, it gave expression to the growing
respect in 18th-century Britain for the animal as an individual, independent
being.
Stubbs and the Horse is the first exhibition to focus on the artist's
remarkable engagement with the horse as a theme and to look at his work in
relation to the significance of horses in 18th-century England. The status
and associations of the noble horse and the colorful world of its devotees,
high and low, are not only fascinating topics in themselves, they are a
setting in which the genius of this long-underrated artist emerges more
vividly than ever. |
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