Comparative Anatomy

George Stubbs’s final anatomical undertaking placed the human body beside a tiger and a common fowl. Its ambitious publishing scheme remained unfinished, although three instalments appeared during his lifetime. The surviving material includes preparatory drawings, printed plates and explanatory writing: related parts of an investigation, rather than interchangeable illustrations. ^[1]

The familiar image of a striding human skeleton belongs to the drawings. Yale calls it Human Skeleton, Lateral View and dates it to 1795–1806. Executed in pen with iron-gall ink and graphite on squared wove paper, the sheet measures 41.3 by 27.3 centimetres. It is in the Yale Center for British Art’s Paul Mellon Collection. ^[2]

A book planned in six numbers

The 1802 subscription proposal announced thirty tables, each requiring two copperplates, to be delivered in six numbers of ten plates. It presented the whole undertaking as Stubbs’s execution and identified him through his earlier horse anatomy. This was a staged commitment: subscribers were being offered a sequence whose eventual extent exceeded the images already available. ^[3]

The distinction between a table and a plate matters. Wellcome’s surviving first part contains plates I–V together with their key figures: ten printed sheets for five subjects. Its copy has neither a title page nor accompanying text. The catalogue dates it to 1804 and records that only the first three projected parts appeared in 1804–06. A description of fifteen tables therefore need not contradict a count of thirty plates. ^[1]

A copy of Parts II and III catalogued by Sims Reed preserves ten illustrated tables and ten corresponding keys: twenty printed sheets in original wrappers. It came from Thomas Villiers, second Earl of Clarendon. The dealer records W. and C. Spilsbury and J. Nichols and Son as printers for the author and dates the parts to 1803–06. That starting date differs from Wellcome’s account and should not be silently imposed on every copy. ^[4]

There is also contemporary evidence that the series reached an institutional audience while Stubbs was alive. The Royal Academy’s Academic Annals, published in 1805 under the authority of the Academy and collected by Prince Hoare, lists the second number among additions to its collections during the 1804–05 reporting period. The entry supplies a firm point within publication history, though it does not give the day on which the number was issued. ^[5]

The Academy’s notice records acquisition rather than a review of the work’s anatomical conclusions. Its value lies partly in that modesty: a named instalment had entered an artistic institution’s collections. The enterprise was already circulating as a publication, not merely existing as a private accumulation of drawings. Its incomplete condition at Stubbs’s death should not erase that lifetime audience. ^[5]

From skeleton to external form

The issued sequence moved from skeletons to external parts and then to superficial anatomical structures. Further numbers were intended to remove additional muscular layers. The thirty published plates included eighteen human images and six each of tiger and fowl, counting the corresponding keys. This unequal allocation of sheets is another reason to distinguish the organisation of the book from a simple row of three equivalent portraits. ^[4]

In the British Museum’s printed human skeleton, shaded bones give the figure weight and depth. Beside its corresponding outline key, the same broadly striding arrangement becomes easier to follow as a network of separate contours. The opposed arms, turned head and separated legs remain recognisable across the pair. One sheet offers a fully modelled bodily presence; the other makes that presence available for identification, with less tonal information competing for attention. ^[6]

The tiger skeleton faces left across the sheet. Its long backbone stretches above a deep cage of ribs, and the tail continues the body’s direction beyond the pelvis. The four legs occupy different positions beneath this elongated structure. The fowl also faces left, but its long curved neck rises above a much more compact torso. Folded wings and staggered legs produce a different balance of lengths and spaces. Comparison depends on keeping those differences visible. ^{[7] [8]}

These printed bodies occupy largely empty pages. There is no stable, menagerie or countryside to explain their positions. Attention moves instead between the shapes of the bodies and the intervals inside and around them. The human figure’s upright trunk, the tiger’s extended back and the bird’s rising neck create three different large patterns before any individual bone is named. Their shared clarity of presentation makes looking across species possible without making their silhouettes identical. ^{[6] [7] [8]}

The squared human drawing

In Yale’s pen-and-graphite human sheet, the skeleton strides towards the left. One arm reaches forward, while the other extends behind it. The nearer leg runs down towards a planted foot; the other bends back, leaving an open angle beneath the pelvis. The head faces in the direction of the advancing arm. These opposed directions make the figure expansive even though its chest and spine occupy a narrow central band. ^[2]

A regular grid crosses the paper and continues through the figure. It supplies a second order of lines, independent of the body’s changing contours. Straight verticals and horizontals pass behind the ribs, through the open spaces between the bones and across the blank margins. Against that repeated structure, each deviation of the skeleton becomes conspicuous: the slant of the shin, the bend at the elbow, the curve beneath the ribcage. ^[2]

The drawing also varies the force of its contours. Darker passages consolidate the head, chest and limbs, while lighter lines remain around and within them. The ribs repeat closely spaced curves, contrasting with the longer, more isolated lengths of the arms and legs. Around the hands and feet the line becomes crowded again. Stubbs gives the extremities attention without allowing their smaller parts to overwhelm the legibility of the whole figure. ^[2]

Yale describes the squaring as preparation for transfer. The sheet therefore records a stage in making the publication, while the careful placement and articulation of its limbs retain their own visual interest. ^[2]

A tiger and a fowl under comparison

A separate Yale drawing is identified as a highly finished study of the tiger skeleton for Table IV. Another, more briefly titled Fowl Body, Lateral View, records the bird’s skeleton. Both are dated 1795–1806 and are in graphite. They are distinct working objects, rather than alternate names for the pen-and-ink human sheet. ^{[9] [10]}

The tiger’s skull is low and forward, with the jaw opening beneath it. The broad sweep of the ribs occupies much of the central body, while the shoulder blade appears as a flatter shape above the forward part of the chest. The spine continues towards a high pelvis before descending into the tail. Its repeated small divisions provide a visible link between the large masses of head and torso and the fine structure at the body’s end. ^[9]

The legs give that long body a less uniform rhythm. One foreleg reaches forward and another falls back beneath the chest; the hind legs also separate into different angles. Small clusters at the paws interrupt their longer lengths. Beneath the ribcage and behind the forward limbs, large areas of untouched paper remain. Those openings keep the limbs individually readable, rather than letting them merge into a continuous barrier below the trunk. ^[9]

The fowl drawing uses the height of its sheet very differently. A small head and pointed beak stand above a long neck built from repeated segments. Below, the overlapping forms of the wings and torso gather into a compact mass. The legs spread away from that mass, one reaching forward and the other back. Their long lower portions bring the feet well below the ribs and the folded wings. ^[10]

The resulting silhouette is neither a small tiger nor a shortened human figure. Its strongest vertical movement belongs to the neck, while the wing bones introduce angular forms across the chest. The pelvis extends backwards above a bent leg, leaving a conspicuous opening beneath it. The toes spread into narrow branches at the bottom of the sheet. The drawing makes comparison an encounter with a different bodily arrangement, rather than an exercise in overlooking difference. ^[10]

The isolation of these bodies helps comparison, but limits the story that their appearance can tell. The sheets do not show an animal’s acquisition, its keeper or the circumstances in which its body became available for study. Those questions require evidence beyond the anatomical figure. A highly specific image of bodily structure can coexist with a much less complete history of the individual represented. ^{[9] [10]}

Working lines and written explanations

Yale identifies another tiger sheet as a study of surface blood supply for the key to Table IX; the fowl study relates to the key for Table XV. Both combine graphite and red chalk. These identities establish different stages and purposes within the project. Their markings should not be mistaken for a single undifferentiated drawing technique. ^{[11] [12]}

The tiger study retains the long lateral outline, but many smaller lines now travel within it. They branch over the head, shoulder, ribs and flank, crossing the larger divisions of the body. Some paths are continuous, others broken or dotted. A faint reddish trace accompanies parts of the darker drawing. The body remains recognisable at a glance, while sustained looking reveals a much denser pattern than the skeletal sheet presents. ^[11]

This density changes the viewer’s task. The eye can follow a long outer contour, then turn inward to a line that divides and subdivides across the same surface. Areas that seemed relatively open in the skeleton become occupied by branching routes. The drawing holds its overall animal shape steady while asking attention to move through many smaller connections. Its clarity depends on the relationship between those scales, rather than on a uniform degree of detail everywhere. ^[11]

In the fowl key study, graphite lines and lighter reddish marks run through the long neck and along the limbs. Narrow forms converge around the upper leg and spread again nearer the foot. Across the torso, broad boundaries lie beside much finer parallel lines. The head, beak, wings and extended toes preserve the bird’s overall orientation, so that these increasingly intricate passages remain attached to a legible whole. ^[12]

The surviving manuscript adds another kind of precision. An English page reproduced in Terence Doherty’s book explains structures of the human head and eye through alphabetic references. It discusses muscles and their attachments, distinguishes neighbouring parts and moves between broad headings and particular anatomical relations. The letters are part of an explanatory apparatus: the image directs the reader towards a place, while prose supplies information that an outline alone cannot convey. This single page demonstrates the importance of writing without allowing the complete manuscript to be reconstructed from it. ^[13]

In 1968, the physician R. B. Fountain discussed the comparative project as anatomical work as well as art. Drawing on assessments by Basil Taylor and the anatomist W. C. Osman Hill, he described a disciplined comparison of successive layers and a consistent concern with bodily proportions. His account also registered limits: the surviving text was not a perfectly finished statement, and some of the birds had extra toes. Such observations belong to a dated specialist assessment, not to an assumption that every detail is universally representative. ^[14]

Fountain’s discussion is valuable because accuracy and incompletion can coexist. The care of an individual observation does not establish that the publishing scheme was finished, that every structure was successfully matched across species, or that the chosen specimen represented every animal of its kind. An anatomical image records particular choices about what to expose, preserve and explain. Its scientific value cannot be measured solely by the beauty of the resulting sheet. ^[14]

The 1817 publication and surviving copies

Edward Orme republished the engraved sequence in June 1817. The British Museum’s set comprises thirty plates, made using etching, stipple and roulette, and lacks a title page. Its record associates the later issue with two letterpress volumes. The sheets measure 58.5 by 45 centimetres; some carry a 1794 paper watermark. That watermark identifies paper within this particular surviving set, rather than proving that the completed publication appeared in 1794. ^[15]

The Museum credits Stubbs as the maker of the prints. This matters when comparing the engraved sheets with the drawings: the publication was another form of his work, rather than a modern reproductive selection from it. Orme’s later role belongs to the history of republication. It should not be transferred backwards to make him the publisher of every lifetime instalment. ^[15]

Wellcome records the 1817 text as a version accompanying the same plates and notes differences from the surviving manuscript. A printed explanation and a preparatory draft therefore require separate attention. The later issue made more of the enterprise available without completing all sixty originally proposed plates. ^[1]

Rediscovery, ownership and public access

The drawings and manuscripts eventually reached Worcester Public Library in Massachusetts as a gift from Dr John Green in 1863. The library’s historical account records a Thomas Bell bookplate, but does not establish a complete chain by which Green acquired the material. ^[16]

Recataloguing brought the folios back to attention in 1957. Librarian Thurston Taylor contacted the art historian Basil Taylor; a Worcester Art Museum exhibition and a British touring exhibition followed. The recovery made the drawings available for renewed scholarly study, and Doherty’s anatomical volume appeared in Britain in 1974 and the United States in 1975. ^[16]

Quentin Bell’s 1975 review of Doherty placed the anatomical drawings within a reassessment of Stubbs’s achievement. He challenged a narrow account of British painting that privileged colour or familiar genres at the expense of exact draughtsmanship. For Bell, understanding construction could sharpen an artist’s apprehension of a body, rather than merely burdening a picture with anatomical facts. ^[17]

Bell also distinguished Stubbs’s observational work from speculative conclusions about the relationship between species. He acknowledged the questions that later generations might bring to the human–tiger–fowl comparison, while finding no reason to credit Stubbs with having advanced beyond the recorder’s task. That is a critical judgement from 1975, not a surviving statement of Stubbs’s intentions. It provides a useful restraint on readings that turn resemblance into evidence of an unrecorded evolutionary theory. ^[17]

Bell’s distinction concerned the artist’s curiosity as much as the finished drawing. He contrasted registering a surface with wanting to understand weight, consistency, function and construction. Within that reading, anatomical work was a form of enquiry that changed what an artist could apprehend, rather than a store of hidden details to be mechanically inserted into every picture. ^[17]

The collection’s growing recognition also raised questions about its ownership. The first page of the library board’s complaint to the Massachusetts Probate Court asks for instructions concerning its authority over the anatomical drawings and manuscripts. It seeks, if necessary, application of the doctrine of cy pres. This was a request for legal direction, rather than a declaration that a sale had already occurred. The document makes the institutional problem concrete: the board controlled the collection, but needed clarification before disposing of it. ^[18]

The subsequent agreement names the City of Worcester, acting through the library board, and Yale University, acting through its Center for British Art. Its opening date is 24 December 1979. It describes 125 drawings and four bound volumes, referring to Doherty’s itemisation, and gives a price of $1.25 million. Those numbers describe the collection in the contract; they should not be treated as an interchangeable count of printed plates or of every anatomical drawing Stubbs ever made. ^[19]

The complaint recalled Green’s earlier gift of about 7,000 books in 1859 and the establishment of the library. That institutional foundation is separate from the arrival of the Stubbs material in 1863. The board’s appeal placed the drawings within a longer history of charitable provision, requiring it to address the purposes attached to the library’s resources as well as their immediate usefulness. ^[18]

The first page directs payment to the City’s Green Library Fund. It links payment with the transfer of title and possession, and places collection of the works at Worcester Art Museum. These terms join financial provision for the library to the physical movement of the objects. They also show why the transaction involved more than a change of name on a museum label: a municipal collection was being transferred between institutions with different responsibilities and resources. ^[19]

The library’s account describes opposition to the sale, including arguments for retaining the drawings locally, alongside support for using the proceeds to improve library services. It records payment on 17 January 1980. The disagreement concerned preservation, access and the meaning of a public gift as well as monetary value. ^[16]

Yale subsequently undertook conservation of the drawings. In Worcester, income from the sale supported an enclosed, climate-controlled local-history room dedicated in 1982. The project’s survival thus connects two histories: the preservation and study of Stubbs’s working material, and the continuing use of the library fund from which it was sold. ^[16]

Reading an unfinished achievement

The anatomical drawings and prints invite different kinds of attention. A grid, a change of line or a red-chalk trace can reveal decisions made before publication; the paired printed sheets show how those decisions were organised for readers. Moving between them gives the unfinished project more substance than either a single striking skeleton or a list of missing plates can provide. ^{[2] [6] [11] [12]}

This late comparison remains distinct from The Anatomy of the Horse. Its conjunction of drawings, plates and explanatory writing gives the unfinished publication a tangible surviving form. ^{[1] [15]}