Biography

George Stubbs left an unusual abundance of evidence for his working life and an unusual shortage of evidence for parts of his private one. Dated books, drawings, prints, exhibition catalogues, institutional offices and commissions make much of his adult career traceable. His childhood, brief connection with Hamlet Winstanley, journey through northern England, reasons for visiting Italy and daily routine at Horkstow survive chiefly through conversations remembered when he was old. A responsible biography has to keep those kinds of evidence visible rather than blend them into a seamless story.

The main early narrative was printed only in 1876. Joseph Mayer said that the notes in his library had been written by William Upcott from Stubbs's own account, then arranged them into a connected memoir. Mayer also admitted that the dates supplied by Stubbs were sparse and difficult to reconcile. ^[1] Sir Walter Gilbey's much fuller Life of George Stubbs appeared in 1898, but Gilbey acknowledged that he had drawn freely on Mayer for the early facts. ^[2] Two apparently separate Victorian lives therefore often lead back to the same late chain of testimony. The anecdotes may preserve Stubbs's retrospective understanding of himself; they are not contemporary records of the 1730s, 1740s or 1750s.

That distinction makes the life more substantial, not less. Stubbs was neither an unexplained prodigy nor a man sealed away with dead horses. Across his career, he worked through households, hospitals, publishers, exhibition societies, country estates, manufactories, print shops and royal patronage. His achievement depended on exact observation, but also on people who obtained subjects, commissioned pictures, prepared supports, engraved or published designs, handled animals, maintained studios and carried unfinished projects forward. The record is strongest when it shows that infrastructure at work.

Liverpool: family trade, property and a childhood remembered later

Stubbs was born in Liverpool in 1724, the son of John Stubbs and his wife Mary. ^[26] A late note gives 24 August, while the current Royal Academy record gives 25 August; the year is safer than forcing certainty about the day. ^{[4] [1]} John was a currier or leather dresser. George worked in the family business before pursuing painting, and the Royal Academy records that a few Liverpool houses passed to him after his father's death in 1741. ^{[26] [4]} Those properties complicate any automatic picture of a penniless beginning, but their value, income and condition are not established well enough to calculate what independence they gave him.

Currying was a skilled material occupation. It involved hides, tools, chemical treatments and judgements about physical condition. It is tempting to make that work the origin of Stubbs's anatomical curiosity, yet no contemporary evidence demonstrates such a causal line. Leather supplied the economic and material setting of the household; it did not predetermine a career in animal anatomy. The same caution applies to Liverpool itself. The Royal Academy's current extended record places the city and the Stubbs family's property within a port economy deeply implicated in colonial commerce and the transatlantic slave trade. ^[4] That context matters, but it does not license an unsupported claim that a particular house or leather transaction derived from one named traffic.

The familiar story pushes Stubbs's anatomical interest far back into childhood. Mayer's narrative says that, at about eight, he borrowed bones and prepared subjects from a neighbouring doctor and drew from them. ^[1] No childhood drawing or contemporaneous diary has been identified to verify this episode. It is best understood as part of an origin story recorded from an elderly artist: revealing of how anatomy came to organise the remembered life, but not firm enough to date the beginning of dissection.

Even the father's attitude arrives through this retrospective account. Mayer depicts John first expecting his only son to continue a secure business, then advising the fifteen-year-old to find a competent painting master. ^[1] The detail may retain family memory, but the surviving record does not include an apprenticeship indenture, business book or letter. What can be stated without embroidery is that Stubbs emerged from a working Liverpool household, spent time in the leather trade, lost his father in 1741 and entered artistic practice without following the standard London academy or studio route. ^{[26] [4]}

Winstanley and the limits of “self-taught”

Current institutional biographies accept a short connection with Hamlet Winstanley, a Lancashire painter associated with the collection at Knowsley. The National Gallery of Art describes an apprenticeship abandoned after only a few weeks; the Royal Academy calls Stubbs Winstanley's assistant. ^{[26] [4]} Neither formulation turns the episode into a conventional multi-year training. The detailed account of the rupture comes from the late memoir.

In Mayer's version, Winstanley promised access to pictures at Knowsley but withheld two works Stubbs chose to copy. Stubbs then broke off the arrangement and declared that he would consult nature instead. ^[1] The scene is vivid, polished and perfectly suited to a later reputation for independence. Its very neatness demands care. It was published more than a century after the alleged dispute, and Mayer was shaping notes into a life. The episode can show how Stubbs or his early memorialists framed his rejection of authority; it cannot by itself prove the words spoken by a teenager.

Calling Stubbs “self-taught” is useful only if it describes what he lacked. He did not receive the long metropolitan studio training that structured many eighteenth-century careers. It does not mean that he learnt without other people, books or institutions. The subsequent record places him among portrait clients, surgeons, medical pupils, printers, engravers and collections. He learnt through commissions and reproducible images as well as direct observation. Independence was a method of assembling knowledge from several settings, not isolation from professional exchange.

The Winstanley story also influenced how later writers judged Stubbs's Italian journey and his relation to older art. Once the teenage vow to follow nature is treated as a literal programme, every later act can look like fulfilment of it. The chronology does not support so simple a script. Before the mature animal pictures, Stubbs spent years earning through portraiture and building knowledge through medical illustration. Those activities provide firmer evidence of development than a single remembered quarrel.

Northern portrait work and the York medical world

The National Portrait Gallery's online extended entry reproduces John Ingamells's 2004 Mid-Georgian Portraits chronology: Stubbs worked as a portrait painter in Yorkshire from about 1745 to 1753. ^[3] The National Gallery of Art likewise places him in northern centres and settling in York around 1745. ^[26] Mayer supplies a more elaborate circuit among Wigan, Leeds, York, Hull and Liverpool, but then concedes that the dates are “very far between” and not readily reconcilable. ^[1] The towns are therefore best treated as a reported sequence, not a securely dated itinerary.

Portraiture was the practical basis of this period. It generated income, access to households and repeated work with living sitters. Mayer names patrons and commissions, yet the loss or uncertain identification of many early pictures prevents a reliable catalogue of the northern years. It would be equally misleading to describe them as an empty prelude. Making portraits required proportion, pose, likeness, materials and negotiation with clients—skills later redirected towards named owners, grooms and animals.

York added a medical environment. Modern museum biographies state that Stubbs studied anatomy at York Hospital or York County Hospital, and the late account names the surgeon Charles Atkinson, human and animal dissection, and private teaching for medical pupils. ^{[26] [4] [33]} No appointment record located for this research establishes that Stubbs held a hospital post. The hospital and teaching details should consequently be read as late testimony supported by modern scholarly acceptance, rather than as an employment history.

A surviving book provides a much firmer anchor. John Burton's An Essay towards a Complete New System of Midwifery was published in London in 1751 with eighteen copperplates. The Morgan Library identifies George Stubbs as its illustrator. ^[34] The Royal Academy goes further, stating that he anonymously etched the illustrations after gaining knowledge through human dissection. ^[4] Whatever uncertainty surrounds the surrounding anecdotes, this publication proves that Stubbs could turn specialised anatomical information into a sequence of printed images by his late twenties.

The Burton commission joined several forms of labour. Anatomical drawing had to select and clarify structure; etching reversed a design onto a plate; the published book placed those images inside a medical argument controlled by an author and publisher. It was not yet the independent anatomical enterprise of 1766. It did, however, establish that visual accuracy, print production and scientific readership were already linked in Stubbs's practice.

Mayer attaches a sensational grave-robbing episode and an improvised lesson in etching to the Burton plates. ^[1] Neither is needed to understand their importance, and the former cannot be responsibly repeated as established fact. The book itself is stronger evidence: dated, catalogued and still inspectable. It shows why the northern phase cannot be reduced to provincial portrait practice or why the later horse studies cannot be treated as a sudden conversion.

Italy in 1754: a secure journey and an uncertain purpose

Stubbs travelled to Italy in 1754. ^{[3] [26]} Beyond that point, certainty quickly thins. Mayer reports a voyage to Leghorn and a stay in Rome, names artists and architects supposedly encountered there, and says that Stubbs refused the conventional practices of copying pictures or drawing from the antique. ^[1] No travel journal, letter, passport trail or coherent group of Italian studies has been used to confirm that detailed itinerary. The National Gallery of Art therefore says plainly that nothing is known of his studies there. ^[26]

The usual explanation is that Stubbs went to decide whether nature was superior to art. That rationale comes through the same late memoir chain as the Winstanley quarrel. ^{[26] [1]} It may accurately preserve what Stubbs later told Upcott or Ozias Humphry. It cannot be treated as a manifesto written in 1754. Readers interested in the distinction between documented words and attributed sayings can follow the evidence on the Stubbs quotations page.

Documentary silence matters here. A conventional Grand Tour biography would populate Rome with formative meetings, old-master revelations and stylistic debts. None can be demonstrated securely for Stubbs. Equally, absence of surviving studies does not prove that he looked at nothing or learnt nothing. The defensible conclusion is narrower: the journey occurred, its practical course remains obscure, and its famous justification belongs to later self-narration. Italy is one of the places where admitting a gap carries more historical value than filling it.

Mary Spencer, George Townly and a partially visible household

By the mid-1750s Mary Spencer was central to Stubbs's life. The National Gallery of Art describes her as his companion until his death and says that they apparently never married. ^[26] The Royal Academy's extended record calls theirs a long relationship from at least the mid-1740s and identifies Mary as his assistant. ^[4] “Companion”, “partner” and the “common-law wife” used by one modern institutional account describe the durable household more safely than a legal marriage that has not been documented. ^[35]

The record of Mary's origins is difficult. In testimony quoted by the Royal Academy, her father was identified as Captain Spencer and associated with the “Guinea trade”, wording that implies a family link with colonial commerce. ^[4] Mayer's edited notes, by contrast, call her Stubbs's niece after the word “aunt” was crossed out; Mayer himself observes that no known sibling makes the relationship easy to explain. ^[1] Those incompatible kinship labels cannot establish blood relation. Nor should the colonial description be expanded into a detailed paternal biography without the underlying record. What survives most consistently is Mary's presence and work.

Her assistance matters because the story of solitary anatomical genius has often absorbed labour performed within the household. Modern institutional accounts credit her during the Horkstow studies, while the memoir tradition makes her the only companion present. ^{[26] [1]} Exactly what she did each day is not documented in a contemporary notebook. Assistance may have included practical handling, preparation, domestic management, recording or other tasks, but assigning a precise list would turn probability into fact. The important correction is that the project was not socially solitary.

George Townly Stubbs belonged to this household history. The National Gallery of Art says that Mary and Stubbs had a son; Mayer more cautiously reports that the engraver George Townly was believed to be Stubbs's natural son. ^{[26] [1]} The sources do not justify confidence about legal status or every genealogical detail. They do agree on the later professional relationship. Museum records identify prints made by George Townly after designs or paintings by the elder Stubbs, making collaboration visible through dated objects rather than surname alone. ^{[36] [37]}

The household therefore supported more than private life. Mary's assistance enters the preparation of anatomical knowledge; George Townly's plates enter the circulation and sale of images. Neither contribution makes authorship indistinct. Stubbs designed, drew, painted and sometimes engraved; Mary assisted the research; George Townly made and published particular prints. A biography must name those roles precisely, because “by Stubbs” can otherwise conceal several kinds of work.

Horkstow: research before metropolitan security

About 1756–58, Stubbs and Mary lived at a farmhouse near Horkstow in Lincolnshire while he dissected and drew horses. ^{[3] [26] [38]} The project is usually said to have occupied roughly eighteen months. That duration and the famous practical description derive substantially from the memoir tradition, a limitation the Mauritshuis makes explicit when it says that the method is inferred from later recollections. ^[38] Current catalogues nevertheless agree on the broad place, purpose and chronological span.

Mayer's own reconstruction shows why exact dates should not be forced. He attempts to fit a return from Italy, work in Liverpool, his mother's death, provincial commissions and the Lincolnshire residence into a sequence, then acknowledges that Stubbs's dates do not reconcile readily. ^[1] Modern institutions place the Horkstow work in 1756–58; that consensus is more responsible than Mayer's drifting intervals. “About” is not evasive here. It marks the boundary of the evidence.

The Royal Academy holds working and finished studies for the anatomical tables and dates them to 1756–58. ^[4] These sheets are the most concrete evidence of what the period produced. They include measured skeleton drawings, successive muscular layers and working marks in several media. Their full interpretation belongs to the account of The Anatomy of the Horse, but their survival transforms Horkstow from legend into an identifiable body of preparatory work.

The physical routine has often eclipsed the professional gamble. Before a stable London market had been secured, the household gave an extended period to research that did not immediately produce saleable portraits. Subjects, premises, materials and time all carried costs. Stubbs was preparing a publication and a visual resource, but there was no guarantee that an engraver would accept it or that subscribers would cover production. Horkstow was an investment in authority as well as an investigation of structure.

The memoir describes suspended carcasses, progressive removal of tissue and drawings made after each stage. ^{[1] [2]} Those details should not be repeated as though a laboratory journal survived. Their broad logic is compatible with the sequences in the drawings, but compatibility is not independent verification of every hook, duration or procedure. It is enough for biography to say that repeated dissection generated a layered graphic project, that Mary assisted, and that the work preceded the public reputation it later helped to create.

Goodwood, London and patronage as infrastructure

After completing the anatomical drawings, Stubbs sought an engraver in London. Sources place his move variously around 1758, 1759 or 1760; he was established in Somerset Street by 1764. ^{[3] [26] [4]} The range “about 1758–60” respects that disagreement. It also prevents the move from being mistaken for a single triumphant arrival. Printing the anatomy project and establishing a painting practice unfolded together.

The 3rd Duke of Richmond provided an early threshold. Goodwood records a commission for The Charlton Hunt in 1759 and a stay of about nine months in 1759–60, during which Stubbs made three large sporting scenes. ^[39] These included Racehorses Belonging to the Duke of Richmond Exercising at Goodwood. Their object histories belong on the dedicated pages; in the life, their significance lies in a patron giving time, subjects, estate access and prominent display to a painter who had not yet published his equine book.

Goodwood also demonstrates how anatomical research became professionally legible. The Duke's interests in science, animals and field sports gave Stubbs's knowledge an immediate use within a country-house commission. ^[39] The work required coordination with owners, servants, huntsmen and handlers. It was not a transfer of isolated scientific diagrams onto canvas. It converted close study into portraits and scenes that mattered to a patron's family, estate and sporting identity.

Other networks followed. The National Gallery says that Stubbs's early racing clients included aristocrats who helped found the Jockey Club. ^[40] This does not make him an official Club artist. It locates him among owners for whom pedigree, conformation, training and performance had financial and dynastic importance. The commission economy behind Stubbs and Georgian racing depended on particular animals and relationships, not on an abstract public enthusiasm for horses.

Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, became a sustained patron. National Gallery research records that Stubbs spent several months at Wentworth in 1762, completed five pictures during the visit and eventually received twelve commissions from Rockingham. ^[41] Whistlejacket belongs to that group, but its visual and commission problems should not take over the biography. What matters here is the repeat relationship: anatomical credibility opened a door, then the ability to deliver ambitious, individually responsive paintings kept it open.

Somerset Street supplied continuity. The National Gallery of Art places Stubbs there by 1764, and the posthumous sale catalogue identifies the later premises as No. 24, Somerset Street, Portman Square. ^{[26] [42]} It was home, studio, display space and eventually the location of the estate sale. A forty-year London career was therefore anchored not just by institutions and estates but by a working address where pictures, plates, drawings and experimental materials accumulated.

Publishing The Anatomy of the Horse

The Horkstow drawings became public in 1766. The Metropolitan Museum catalogues The Anatomy of the Horse as written and illustrated by George Stubbs, with etched illustrations. ^[43] The Royal Academy's copy preserves a title that identifies him simply as “George Stubbs, Painter” and describes eighteen tables done from nature. ^[4] Gilbey's transcription of the first edition records twenty-four engraved plates across those tables. ^[2] The book asserted several professional identities at once: author, anatomist, draughtsman, etcher and painter.

Publication took years. The National Gallery of Art says that Stubbs came to London hoping to find a reproductive engraver but made the plates himself after failing to secure one. ^[26] Mayer and Gilbey elaborate that leading engravers did not want the task and that Stubbs etched outside his regular painting hours. ^{[1] [2]} The refusal narrative derives from recollection, yet the result is physical fact: the published plates are attributed to Stubbs, and he had already acquired etching experience through the Burton project.

The delay is important to the shape of the career. Stubbs did not finish anatomy and then begin painting. Goodwood and other commissions developed while the plates were being prepared. Income-producing work, self-publication and technical learning overlapped. That pattern makes the book less a miraculous debut than a long business and intellectual project carried alongside portrait practice.

The intended audience was mixed. In the preface, as reproduced in the early sources, Stubbs addressed artists, sculptors and designers, people responsible for the medical care of horses, readers of comparative anatomy, and owners or breeders. ^[2] Those constituencies explain the book's dual function. It offered usable anatomical information while also making a public case for the knowledge behind his painting. The title-page designation “Painter” was not incidental; scientific labour could distinguish an artist within a competitive market.

Reception can be documented more exactly than the phrase “instant acclaim” suggests. Mayer and Gilbey reproduce a substantial 1767 medical review that praised the work as a privately financed achievement and considered Stubbs both dissector and painter. ^{[1] [2]} They also reproduce letters from the Dutch anatomist Petrus Camper dated 1771 and 1772. Camper asked whether Stubbs had engraved the plates, wanted copies, compared their accuracy favourably with major human anatomical illustration and encouraged continuation into internal organs. ^[1] These are identifiable responses by relevant readers, not proof that every artist, physician or patron immediately knew the book.

The correspondence also reveals limits to circulation. Camper's second letter reportedly named only a few owners in his region even while describing widespread admiration. ^[1] Specialist esteem and broad distribution were not the same thing. Subscription publication, the cost of a folio and the narrowness of its subject shaped its audience. Its influence on Stubbs's career came partly from rarity: patrons could associate a commissioned picture with an unusually demanding published demonstration of knowledge.

The book did not turn every later horse into an anatomical chart. It altered the terms on which Stubbs could be judged. Within an academic hierarchy that placed animal and sporting subjects below history painting, publication gave those subjects an intellectual credential. It also left a durable work that could be reassessed independently of changes in taste, ownership and the survival of paintings.

Exhibiting and governing at the Society of Artists

Stubbs was deeply involved in collective exhibition culture. The exact starting year varies by source: the Royal Academy and Government Art Collection give Society of Artists exhibitions from 1761, while the National Portrait Gallery and National Gallery of Art begin in 1762. ^{[3] [26] [4] [35]} It is safest to say that he exhibited there from the early 1760s through 1774. The discrepancy probably reflects catalogue or institutional definitions; it should not be hidden by false precision.

His participation went far beyond sending pictures. The Government Art Collection records him as a director from 1765 to 1774, treasurer from 1768 to 1772 and president in 1772–73. ^[35] These overlapping offices required administration, financial oversight and negotiation among artists. They are strong evidence against the recurrent portrait of Stubbs as instinctively outside institutions. He accepted institutional labour for nearly a decade and led the organisation for a year.

Gilbey's catalogue compilation counts about fifty Society exhibits by Stubbs between 1762 and 1774. ^[2] The individual entries range across horse portraits, hunting subjects, dogs, large cats, a kangaroo and narrative works. That list should not be treated as a complete catalogue raisonné, and the objects belong to their own pages. As career evidence, however, it shows how exhibitions tested different subjects in public before a mixed audience rather than merely delivering private commissions to country houses.

The Society also gave animal painting a visible place outside the later Royal Academy structure. Stubbs's administrative seniority did not erase the period's genre hierarchy, but it let a practitioner of sporting and animal subjects participate in shaping an exhibition institution. Presidency was not a lifetime honour or proof of uncontested authority. It was a dated office within a changing organisation, and Stubbs's move to Royal Academy exhibitions after 1774 shows that institutional allegiance remained practical.

The Royal Academy: election, diploma and formal status

Stubbs first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1775 and continued to appear there intermittently until 1803. ^{[3] [4]} He was not a founder when the Academy was established in 1768. The National Gallery of Art interprets that exclusion partly through his classification as an animal painter, though direct evidence for every founder's motive is not available. ^[26] What followed is often compressed into the claim that he became an Academician and quarrelled with the institution. The record is more exact—and more revealing.

The current Royal Academy profile identifies him as George Stubbs ARA and records his election as an Associate on 6 November 1780. ^[4] In information sent by the Academy secretary to Gilbey in the late nineteenth century, Stubbs attended the Council on 26 January 1781 to receive his Associate's diploma and was elected a full Academician on 13 February 1781. ^[2] Gilbey was relaying institutional particulars supplied for his research, not reproducing an independently inspected minute book page. Even so, the dated sequence is more useful than his surrounding polemic.

Full membership was never completed. The Academy required a diploma work. According to the secretary's account, a rule confirmed on 10 December 1781 provided that an elected Academician or Associate who failed to take up a diploma within a year could be treated as declining membership unless the Council accepted an explanation. ^[2] On 31 December 1782 the Council ordered its secretary to write to Stubbs; the letter went on 1 January 1783. On 31 January the secretary reported no answer, and on 11 February the General Assembly declared a vacancy because Stubbs had not complied with the election laws. ^[2]

That administrative sequence explains why several descriptions coexist. Stubbs had been voted an RA and was styled “R.A. elect” in the 1782 catalogue, but he never supplied the diploma picture and did not complete full membership. Later books called him RA, and he reportedly claimed the dignity. Current institutional catalogues correctly retain ARA or describe the RA election as unratified or annulled. ^{[3] [26] [4]} The distinction is not pedantic. It separates a vote from the formal status that followed its conditions.

The reason for non-compliance remains less certain. Mayer's Upcott narrative says that enamel paintings submitted to the Academy were hung high and that catalogue explanations were cut, leading Stubbs to refuse a diploma picture. ^[1] Gilbey expands this into an accusatory history of Academy hostility. ^[2] The National Gallery of Art calls the hanging explanation probable. ^[26] None of these establishes a private motive with the certainty of the dates. Stubbs may have resented the display, objected to the rule, resisted giving away a valuable work, or combined several objections. The biography should leave that question open.

Institutional friction did not end his exhibiting. His 1781 self-portrait, enamel on a Wedgwood plaque, was shown at the Academy in 1782. ^[44] He returned in later years and remained an exhibitor into the new century. ^[3] The relationship was therefore neither acceptance without conflict nor heroic withdrawal. Stubbs used the Academy's public platform while occupying an unresolved position within its membership system.

This episode also warns against reading initials as simple evidence. “RA” on a later title page, print or catalogue can record aspiration, self-description or inconsistent contemporary usage. The current Academy's preferred “ARA” and the documented diploma sequence provide the responsible public form. Honour was conferred by vote, withheld in formal completion and disputed in memory.

Prints, George Townly and distributed authorship

Print was not a secondary afterlife added to Stubbs's paintings. It had been part of his practice since the Burton plates and became the means by which the anatomy book existed. Later, he made original plates, designed images for other engravers and authorised or benefited from reproductive work. The Stubbs prints therefore require maker roles to be named rather than collapsed into the phrase “a Stubbs engraving”.

George Townly's work makes the family collaboration concrete. The British Museum catalogues The Sebra, or Wild Ass as a mezzotint made by George Townly after George Stubbs in 1771. ^[37] Its record separates the person who created the print from the painter whose design it translated. The Museum likewise catalogues Stallion and Mare as a mezzotint with etching made by George Townly after Stubbs, first published in 1776 and later republished. ^[36] An early state bore George Townly's own publishing address, demonstrating that he could act as engraver and publisher rather than merely an anonymous studio hand. ^[36]

These distinctions matter commercially. A painting had one location and owner; a plate could produce impressions, states and later editions. But multiplication did not guarantee profit or an unlimited audience. Copper, paper, labour, advertising, retail networks and unsold stock all affected the result. The 1807 studio catalogue still listed sets of prints and impressions, a reminder that circulation created inventory as well as reach. ^[2]

Surviving museum records show George Townly acting as publisher as well as engraver. ^[36] His career cannot be reduced entirely to service to his father, just as every plate after the elder Stubbs cannot be assumed to have remained under the painter's direct control. Within the family business, however, their collaboration allowed images to move between painting, engraving and publishing. The intended engravings for the late Turf project show that this arrangement remained important when both men were mature practitioners. ^[26]

Authorship was consequently distributed but legible. “Painted by”, “after”, “engraved by” and “published by” identify different acts. Stubbs's career combined them in changing configurations, sometimes within his own hand and sometimes across collaborators. That flexibility helped his subjects circulate, but it also exposed him to the economics of plates and editions—risks that a biography centred only on finished paintings would miss.

Enamel, Wedgwood and the cost of experiment

During the 1770s, Stubbs devoted increasing energy to enamel and other non-standard painting supports. The National Gallery of Art connects that work to a period when his reputation as an animal painter narrowed his standing and to a fruitful association with Josiah Wedgwood. ^[26] The development was not a clean abandonment of oil painting. It added technically demanding processes to a practice already divided among commissions, print and exhibition.

The early biographies date the start of systematic enamel experiments to 1771 and associate the suggestion with the miniaturist Richard Cosway. ^{[1] [2]} That origin story remains retrospective. A more concrete point appears in correspondence reproduced by Gilbey: in October 1778 Wedgwood wrote to his partner Thomas Bentley about his effort to manufacture a support for Stubbs and described his own role as making the painter's “canvas”. ^[2] The transcription documents a manufacturer treating the problem of large ceramic plaques as an active technical collaboration, although the original letter was not independently inspected for this manuscript.

Scale mattered. Ordinary enamel supports limited ambition, while firing placed material constraints on both plaque and colour. Wedgwood and Bentley's experiments supplied ceramic tablets that could carry larger compositions. ^{[26] [2]} Manufacture did not simply provide a neutral surface after the artistic work was conceived. It shaped what could survive the kiln, how large a picture could become, how it could be framed and how much time and expense preceded sale.

The securely documented object is Stubbs's self-portrait of 1781. The National Portrait Gallery records it as enamel on an oval Wedgwood plaque measuring 697 by 531 millimetres, NPG 4575, and confirms its Academy exhibition in 1782. ^[44] A contemporary newspaper reviewer recognised it as a life-sized image but criticised the whiteness of its colouring. ^[44] That response is useful evidence of public reception. The small local derivative available for this project is not sufficient for independent close reading, so no claim about expression, costume, surface or character is drawn from it.

Enamel must also be separated from the mixed paint media sometimes called “encaustic”. National Gallery scientists analysed samples from ten Stubbs paintings dated between 1772 and 1800. They identified four principal material categories: drying oil, a fatty or non-drying oil component, beeswax and pine resin. ^[45] The mixtures were not constant. The three earliest sampled works contained no drying oil, while examples from 1783 onward combined it with other components. ^[45] This evidence applies to the tested group, not automatically to every picture.

Fired enamel on copper or ceramic and wax-resin-containing paint on wood are different technical systems. Stubbs pursued several rather than passing through one orderly sequence. The technical account of his enamel and printmaking owns the recipes and conservation evidence. Within the life, the point is professional: experimentation required partners, materials, repeated trials and capital, while its products had to compete for wall space and buyers.

That cost helps explain why the Academy dispute acquired such force in later recollection. If Stubbs believed the display disadvantaged his enamels, the grievance concerned years of work and a new market, not merely personal vanity. Yet the evidence still does not prove that poor hanging alone caused the missing diploma work. Material risk and institutional frustration intersected without becoming a single documented motive.

Rural subjects, royal work and a late market under pressure

In the 1780s Stubbs broadened his work in rural subjects and developed a refined print method that the National Gallery of Art judges too specialised to become popular. ^[26] “Broadening” is more accurate than abandoning animals. The surviving paintings combine agricultural labour, landscape, people and creatures in different proportions, while commissions for individual animals continued. The change shows an artist testing adjacent markets rather than repeating one successful formula indefinitely.

The early 1790s brought substantial royal patronage. Martin Postle's Royal Academy Chronicle study records that the 1791 exhibition catalogue planned four Stubbs works, including a portrait of the Prince of Wales. The portrait was not ready when the exhibition opened, leaving its frame temporarily empty before another hunting picture filled it. ^[46] This small failure is more informative than a myth of effortless productivity: even a senior artist working for a royal client negotiated deadlines, display and incomplete work.

The same study calculates more than forty works produced between 1791 and 1793 and says that the Prince purchased nineteen pictures. ^[46] Royal Collection records include works made for the Prince in this period; A Bay Horse with a Groom is signed and dated 1791. ^[47] These figures correct the idea that Stubbs had already disappeared from elite attention. They also do not establish financial security. A high output could bring payments while increasing labour, material costs and dependence on one patron.

The National Gallery of Art characterises the final decade as a period of financial difficulty. ^[26] That institutional judgement must be held beside the evidence of royal demand rather than used to erase it. “Difficulty” need not mean destitution, and nineteen purchases do not prove liquidity. The record used here does not identify a single mechanism. Delayed payments, resources committed to experimental works and plates, speculative failure or unsold stock are possible pressures rather than documented account entries. Exact debts or balances have not been located.

Stubbs's late practice was therefore productive and exposed. He still received prestigious commissions, exhibited when it suited him and worked across media. At the same time, some ventures required him to finance production ahead of demand. This combination is more credible than either a triumphant royal finale or a sentimental story of complete neglect.

The Turf project and comparative anatomy

The sharpest commercial failure was the Turf Review project. In 1790 Stubbs accepted a commission for a historical series of celebrated racehorses intended for paintings, engravings and accompanying text. Sixteen pictures were exhibited in 1794; none sold, and the enterprise lapsed. ^[26] George Townly was intended to translate the images into prints, extending the established father-son division of labour. ^[26]

Mayer and Gilbey repeat a claim that £9,000 had been deposited for Stubbs to draw upon. ^{[1] [2]} No bank record or contract was inspected here, and the modern National Gallery of Art account does not rely on that sum. It is excluded rather than converted into a precise measure of loss. The supported facts already show the risk: a coordinated group, an exhibition, an engraving plan and failure to secure buyers.

Several Turf Gallery pictures remained in the Somerset Street collection at Stubbs's death. The first day of the 1807 sale included a run of named racehorse portraits, among them Baronet, as well as works associated with Eclipse, Gimcrack and the Godolphin Arabian. ^[2] Their presence does not reveal whether every work was an unsold original, duplicate or retained study. It does show that the project continued to occupy physical and financial space long after its public launch.

At roughly the same late stage, Stubbs returned to anatomy on a comparative scale. The British Museum holds thirty plates from A Comparative Anatomical Exposition, dated 1804–06, in which human structures are set beside those of a tiger and a common fowl. The plates use etching, stipple and roulette and compare skeletons and musculature. ^[48] The Royal Academy's associated book record identifies Stubbs as author, draughtsman, engraver and publisher and shows that six numbers were planned. ^[4]

The project remained incomplete at his death and was republished by Edward Orme in 1817. ^[48] Its conception reached beyond the horse, but it should not be recast as a prediction of evolutionary theory. Stubbs was comparing visible structures through an eighteenth-century anatomical programme. The dedicated Comparative Anatomical Exposition page follows the plates and publication problems; the biography places them as the final expansion of a practice begun in York.

The two projects illuminate different sides of late professional life. The Turf series tried to convert racing history into coordinated paintings, prints and text but failed in the market. Comparative anatomy converted decades of observation into another self-directed publication and outlived him unfinished. Both required advance labour whose return was uncertain. Persistence did not remove commercial risk; it repeatedly exposed him to it.

Health, last work and the sources for a final scene

A contemporary obituary in the Gentleman's Magazine, quoted in Ingamells's NPG catalogue, describes Stubbs as an early riser, physically robust and abstemious, drinking water during his last forty years. ^[3] Such obituary characterisation is not a medical record, but it is closer to 1806 than the later embellished death scenes. It also accords with a dated note published by Mayer in which Upcott reported finding the seventy-nine-year-old Stubbs engraving the comparative-anatomy plates in 1803. ^[1]

Upcott added that Stubbs claimed to have walked from Somerset Street towards the Grove near Watford after missing a coach. ^[1] The report is specific and linked to an 1803 visit, yet it was still printed decades later. It can support the impression of sustained work and mobility without requiring every mileage claim to be accepted literally. The famous assertion that he carried entire horse carcasses upstairs is still weaker and contributes nothing necessary to the life.

Gilbey gives a detailed account of a long walk on the day before death, sudden chest pain and a quiet end in an armchair. ^[2] This is retrospective reminiscence, not an inspected physician's record or contemporary diary. It has been omitted from the factual chronology. What is documented is sufficient: Stubbs continued the comparative plates into 1804–06 and died before completing their planned publication. ^{[4] [48]}

Death, probate and the contents of Somerset Street

Stubbs died in London on 10 July 1806. ^{[3] [26] [4]} The National Archives' official Discovery catalogue records Will of George Stubbs, Painter of Saint Marylebone, Middlesex, reference PROB 11/1447/52, in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury will registers, dated 16 July 1806. ^[49] That entry proves the existence and probate date of a registered will. The document itself was not inspected, so no beneficiary, bequest, executrix or estate value is inferred from it.

Later accounts go further than the evidence presently allows. Mayer says that Stubbs left his property to Mary Spencer. ^[1] Gilbey prints what he presents as a transcription of the will. ^[2] Neither substitutes for checking the official registered copy, and the bequest claim is not upgraded here. Gilbey also says that a burial certificate placed Stubbs at St Marylebone on 18 July. ^[2] Because the underlying parish register was not inspected, this remains a specifically attributed report rather than an independently verified burial record.

A contemporary sale catalogue supplies a different kind of estate evidence. The Rijksmuseum's library record identifies an auction held at No. 24 Somerset Street on 26 and 27 May 1807, conducted by Peter Coxe “by order of the executrix”. It does not name that executrix. ^[42] Gilbey reproduces the title page and the catalogue's complete sequence of lots. ^[2] The first day comprised 94 lots and the second 98, making 192 in all.

The categories reveal the residue of a long working establishment. There were impressions and sets of engravings; individual drawings and highly finished designs; books of landscape and animal studies; paintings in oil and enamel; anatomical and figure material; Turf Gallery portraits; works attributed to older masters; and pictures by or after other artists. ^[2] One drawing book was catalogued as containing two hundred landscapes, while others grouped studies of cattle, lions, stags, tigers, monkeys, buffaloes and trees. ^[2] Sale descriptions are promotional and attributions may not meet modern standards, but the quantity and range are primary evidence of what the auctioneer offered from the premises.

This inventory changes the meaning of “unfinished life”. Stubbs did not leave only the comparative plates and a few famous canvases. The studio contained decades of working material, repeatable print assets, unsold or retained pictures and reference collections. That breadth helps explain how painting, animal study, print and anatomy remained connected in practice even when modern collections separate them by department.

The catalogue cannot answer every financial question. It gives no net estate value in the institutional record used here, no complete account of debts, and no proof that every lot sold. A substantial residual inventory can indicate productive accumulation, commercial overhang or both. It should not be used to dramatise either wealth or poverty. Its secure contribution is a dated, address-specific picture of the material left for sale eleven months after Stubbs's death.

Reputation during life and reconstruction after death

Stubbs's contemporary reputation was never one thing. A medical reviewer in 1767 assessed the anatomical book; Petrus Camper wrote as a fellow anatomist; country-house patrons valued portraits of animals and people; Society audiences saw a wide subject range; Academy visitors encountered oils, enamels and prints. ^{[1] [2]} These constituencies overlapped, but each rewarded different skills.

Classification could both create a market and restrict status. Gilbey reproduces late-eighteenth-century criticism that praised Stubbs's command of horse anatomy while another satirical judgement effectively told him to remain with horses and dogs rather than paint people. ^[2] The contradiction is revealing. Being recognised as the leading animal specialist attracted important commissions, yet the same label could make portraiture, narrative, rural subjects and experimental materials seem marginal.

The 1806 obituary foregrounded habits, endurance and intellectual attainment more than a comprehensive assessment of the work. ^[3] The following year's sale catalogue praised Stubbs as a British artist whose study of anatomy underlay his painting, but it was also designed to stimulate bidding. ^[2] Neither source is neutral. Together they show reputation being shaped immediately into memorable character and marketable studio legacy.

Twentieth-century collecting materially altered the picture. The Metropolitan Museum records that Paul Mellon bought his first Stubbs in 1936 and eventually owned nearly two hundred works, and credits that sustained collecting with prompting major reassessment. ^[33] The mechanism matters: pictures became available for comparison, research and public display rather than simply being “rediscovered” by taste alone.

Judy Egerton's George Stubbs, Painter, published by the Paul Mellon Centre in 2007, was the first full catalogue raisonné of the paintings and drawings. ^[50] Its scale—700 pages—and its integration of objects with a study of career replaced many loose traditions with systematic comparison. The Centre's current research guide shows how large the evidence base has become: more than twenty Stubbs files in the Egerton archive, over five hundred associated photo-archive images, more than twenty-five books and over twenty exhibition catalogues. ^[51] Information is not absent in the simple sense; it is unevenly distributed among objects, archival notes, catalogues and later testimony.

That is why a documented biography should not end with a formula such as “the neglected horse painter was finally recognised”. Stubbs was celebrated, commissioned, institutionally active, categorised, disputed, collected and reclassified at different times. He built authority through anatomy but did not become only an anatomist; he served sporting patrons without painting only sport; he tested enamel and print without abandoning oil; he worked through a household and commercial network while cultivating an image of independence. His life becomes most persuasive when gaps remain gaps and when each surviving record is allowed to say exactly what it can.