Drill and Albino Baboon

George Stubbs's Drill and albino baboon belongs to the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, London. The unsigned painting, catalogued as before 1789, measures 67 × 97 cm and is oil on millboard. Its collection number is RCSSC/P 266. ^[1]

Two animals occupy a continuous brown setting, but their bodies establish very different shapes. At the left, the drill rises almost to the top of the picture, one arm reaching upwards and the other extending towards a staff. At the right, the pale baboon sits close to the ground, its head inclined towards its gathered limbs. Height and breadth, dark coat and pale coat, extended gesture and compact posture make the encounter immediately legible. ^[2]

Two bodies in one space

The drill's upright body provides the painting's strongest vertical. Its head is turned across the picture towards the right, while its chest faces more towards us. That difference between the directions of head and trunk prevents the standing figure from becoming a flat silhouette. We see a body that turns, with the pale front held between much darker areas around its shoulders and sides. ^[2]

The raised arm carries this turn into the upper part of the painting. It slopes away from the shoulder towards the top edge, opening an area of brown space between arm and head. On the opposite side, the arm reaching towards the staff descends. The two gestures therefore spread in different directions, giving the upper body a broad, irregular outline rather than the symmetry of a figure standing to attention. ^[2]

Below, the legs organise another difference. One reaches down towards the foreground; the other bends, with the foot placed higher on a projecting stone. This makes the lower body uneven as well. The drill's height is built from changes of direction, rather than from two straight legs supporting a straight trunk. Its stance remains readable as a collection of separate contacts with the surrounding ground. ^[2]

The pale baboon reverses that expansive arrangement. Its back forms a rounded outer contour and its head bends into the space enclosed by the body. The limbs are gathered forwards, with the hands near a bent knee. Instead of extending into the upper field, the animal occupies a low area at the right. The long tail carries its outline farther along the ground, providing a thin continuation beyond the larger pale mass. ^[2]

Staff, stone and balance

The staff runs diagonally through the left side. It reaches from near the lower edge towards the drill's extended hand, then continues a short distance above the grip. Its narrow, relatively straight form contrasts with the changing contours of the animal. Because it stands against a dark area, it is easy to follow as a separate object. ^[2]

The stone beneath the lifted foot gives the other side of the stance a different kind of support. It is broad where the staff is slender, and close to the body where the staff opens out towards the edge. These two objects make the posture intelligible through unequal shapes. The drill does not stand on an abstract baseline: its arrangement belongs to the irregular pieces of ground around it. ^[2]

Looking towards the other animal

The drill's turned face directs attention across the space between them. The pale baboon's inclined head, however, does not return that direction with an equally raised gaze. This makes the relationship less straightforward than a pair of figures confronting one another. One body opens into the surrounding space; the other draws our attention down towards the limbs gathered before it. ^[2]

There is no human attendant within the painted scene. The staff introduces an object into the drill's grasp, but the two animals remain the principal presences. Their surroundings supply ground, a darker backdrop and room between the bodies. Without a crowd of other objects competing for attention, changes in posture become the main events of the picture. ^[2]

John Hunter

The museum associates the drill with William Gough, an animal dealer on Holborn Hill, and the pale baboon with George Bayly, a dealer in Piccadilly. The latter animal was called the ‘child of the sun’. These London connections place the subjects within the trade and display of unfamiliar animals. ^[1]

John Hunter's surviving notes provide a particularly direct connection between the animals and his pictures. Published after his death in 1861, they introduce ‘Bailey's Monkey’ and ‘Mr. Gough's Monkey’, each accompanied by a statement that he possessed a painting. The entries then turn to the structure of the dissected bodies, comparing their organs repeatedly with those of humans. ^[16]

The contrast with Stubbs's image is revealing. Hunter's account follows the arrangement of internal organs, whereas the painting presents complete bodies in space. In the drill entry, Hunter also discusses the upward slope of the collarbones and the strong muscles at the sides of the head. His attention moved between outward form and structures that could be investigated through dissection. ^[16]

The 1861 edition was arranged and annotated by Richard Owen. Its bracketed animal names belong to that later editorial framework: an albino variety of a macaque and a ‘pig-faced baboon’. They should be distinguished from Hunter's own dealer-based headings. The volume preserves both an earlier observer's descriptions and a subsequent attempt to organise them taxonomically. ^[16]

Readers interested in the relationship between visible form and anatomical investigation can explore Stubbs's Anatomy of the Horse and his later Comparative Anatomical Exposition.

Titles and uncertain histories

The current museum record identifies the drill as Mandrillus leucophaeus and records the other animal under the baboon genus Papio. The older title, Baboon and albino macaque, reflects the history of changing identifications. The painting was owned by John Hunter before his death in 1793 and displayed in his Leicester Square museum. ^[1]

In their 2006 study, W. D. Ian Rolfe and Caroline Grigson treat a commission from Hunter as probable. They also examine the later claim that the animals belonged to Lord Shelburne. The relationship between these accounts remains unresolved. They also discuss a proposed date around 1770–75 based on stylistic comparisons. ^[17]

Owen identifies a separate Shelburne animal in Hunter's papers as a gibbon, distinct from either of these painted subjects. ^[16]

This history gives the title a practical importance. Names that look like straightforward descriptions may preserve earlier attempts to classify an unfamiliar animal. Here, the present collection title provides a useful way into the work, while the older labels explain how differently its subjects have been understood. ^[1]

A primate with a staff

Rolfe and Grigson place the drill's staff within a longer tradition of primate imagery. They suggest that such a support could evoke both proximity to human upright posture and a perceived inability to maintain it unaided. Their interpretation remains a proposal about the picture's historical context, rather than a documented explanation from Stubbs. They also caution against treating every staff in an animal image as purely symbolic. ^[17]

A useful visual comparison is the first plate of Edward Tyson's 1699 Orang-outang, sive Homo sylvestris, displayed by the Linda Hall Library. The animal represented there is a chimpanzee. The library explains that Tyson demonstrated anatomical correspondences between apes and humans without understanding those similarities as evidence of common descent. ^[18]

In the engraving, the animal faces almost directly forwards. Its feet are separated, its long arms descend on either side, and a tall staff reaches from the ground to its grasp at the viewer's left. The other hand is open. A small landscape extends behind the body, but the standing figure dominates the sheet, presented from head to foot against a largely pale field. ^[18]

Stubbs's arrangement is more oblique and less symmetrical. His drill turns its head, raises an arm and places one foot higher than the other. The staff belongs to a body already divided into different movements. Beside it, the seated baboon introduces a second posture and another concentration of light, giving the painting an internal comparison absent from the single standing figure in Tyson's plate. ^{[2] [18]}