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by: Amy Mannarino, Manager of Public Relations, Walters Art Museum
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March 10, 2005-
Exhibit extended through June 5, 2005!
Opening March 13, 2005, the Walters Art Museum will present Stubbs and the Horse, an unprecedented exhibition focusing on George Stubbs's (1724-1806) remarkable range within the equine theme - from portraits of famous racehorses to dramatic scenes of mortal combat between wild horses and lions, all based on meticulous anatomical studies. This collection of compelling images celebrates a British artist whom many consider to be the greatest painter of horses in the history of art. He portrayed horses with a classical beauty, heroism and expressiveness previously reserved for the human figure. Containing 40 major paintings, 35 drawings and three rare copies of the book The Anatomy of the Horse, Stubbs and the Horse is the first exhibition to focus on the artist's remarkable engagement with the horse as a theme.
The exhibition's centerpiece is the monumental Whistlejacket, the most widely admired of Stubbs's works since its acquisition by the National Gallery in London in 1997. Over nine feet tall, this breathtaking work has never before been seen outside of Britain.
"Whistlejacket in Baltimore all by itself would be a not-to-be-missed exhibition," said Gary Vikan, director of the Walters Art Museum. "Stubbs is one of the truly great painters of all time, and what is most revealing of his genius is how he puts his paintings together with a calculated, subtle sense of compositional rhythm combined with his scientifically-based anatomical knowledge. His aesthetic is startling in its realism and awe-inspiring in its sublime beauty."
"It may seem odd to refer to Stubbs's paintings as portraits," commented Eik Kahng, Walters curator of 18th- and 19th-century art. "However, Stubbs did not create generic representations of the noble horse associated with royalty and power. Instead, he captured the look and personality of each individual steed."
This exhibition was organized by the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, in association with the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, and the National Gallery, London. The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. The lead sponsors for the Baltimore venue are Brown Advisory, Fancy Hill Foundation and Howard and Martha Head Fund, Inc. Contributing sponsors include Audi of Hunt Valley, Maryland Horse Breeders Association & Dark Hollow Farm, Maryland Saddlery/Hope Birsh & Stephen Plakotoris, Miss Dorothy McIlvain Scott and Mr. and Mrs. M. David Testa. Additional support has been provided by Alex. Brown & Sons Charitable Foundation, Inc., Frank and Helen Bonsal, Richard and Rosalee Davison, Hannah and Thorne Gould, Legg Mason Trust, F.S.B., Sotheby's and The Stiles Ewing Tuttle Charitable Trust; Mr. Stiles T. Colwill and Mr. Jonathan Gargiulo.
Following its presentation at the Walters Art Museum, the exhibition's final venue will be the National Gallery, London from June 29-Sept. 25, 2005.
About the Exhibition
In Stubbs's day, only subjects such as myth, allegory, the Bible, historic events and great literature were considered worthy artistic themes. It was not until the 19th century that the previously considered "low" art of portraiture, landscapes and animal paintings began to be viewed in a serious manner.
The foundation of Stubbs's 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 labor came the impeccably ordered and detailed book The Anatomy of the Horse, published in 1766. It contained 18 plates etched by him from his drawings and more than 50,000 words of thorough scientific text. Sometimes described as an artist-scientist, Stubbs' technical credentials allowed his patrons to see him as much more than an ordinary genre painter.
"To call George Stubbs 'just a horse painter' is like calling Leonardo da Vinci 'just a painter of humans,'" said Vikan. "Actually, Stubbs is to the horse as Leonardo is to the human, since both were the first to understand and convey the workings of their subject from the inside out, based on a profound understanding of anatomy."
Settling in London at the end of the 1750s where he lived for the rest of his life, Stubbs worked mostly for the horse-loving British nobility and gentry. Although he took advantage of the burgeoning public art exhibitions in his lifetime, the mainstay of his patronage was the private commission. He painted portraits of favorite racers, hunters and stallions, scenes of mares and foals at stud farms and draft animals from the fine carriage horse down to the humble carthorse. With the importation of Middle-Eastern and North-African stallions to develop and create the thoroughbred, the 18th century was the golden age of horse breeding and racing in Britain. Stubbs came on the scene at a moment of high excitement and profited from the desire of owner-breeders to record and celebrate the equine world. They knew horses and wanted an artist who knew them just as well.
A key patron of Stubbs was Viscount Bolingbroke, a famous figure in the world of breeding and racing, both as an owner-breeder and as a reckless gambler. Nicknamed "Bully," he owned many of the successful horses of the age, including the most popular and admired of all 18th-century racehorses, Gimcrack. Bolingbroke had Gimcrack for only six months, but during that time he commissioned a masterpiece of turf portraiture, Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath, with a Trainer, a Stable-Lad, and a Jockey. Using one of his favorite long, horizontal canvases, Stubbs commemorated an early Gimcrack victory using the technique of double or "time-shift" composition -Gimcrack winning a race in the right background and later a stable-lad rubbing him down, attended by his trainer and jockey, in the left foreground. The curious absence of spectators in the background scene is typical of the artist - he shows none of the crowds or "rough-and-tumble" of the races, only the private world of the racehorse and attendants.
The most adventurous of Stubbs's patrons, the Marquess of Rockingham, was also the most eminent. Rockingham was an important politician, leading the Whig Party and supporting independence for the American colonies. For brief periods in 1765-66 and 1782, he was prime minister. He was an enthusiastic owner-breeder and maintained a large stud farm at his country house. Rockingham commissioned the first of Stubbs's remarkable paintings of horses against plain backgrounds, of which Whistlejacket is the most famous.
Whistlejacket was a grandson of the Godolphin Arabian, one of the "foundation sires" of the thoroughbred. Rockingham raced him for three years and retired him to stud in 1759. 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. The figure of the king and the setting were to be added by other painters-portrait and landscape specialists. When Rockingham saw Stubbs's painting, however, he abandoned the plan and had Stubbs complete the work as a portrait of Whistlejacket with neither rider nor setting. The result was more powerful as a work of art than a collaborative equestrian portrait of the king could ever 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.
Rockingham also has the distinction of having commissioned the first of Stubbs's paintings of horses attacked by lions, which suggested the origins of the noble thoroughbred in the wild. Stubbs has often been identified with the Enlightenment ideal of the "Sublime," - a feeling of controlled terror and of the awe-inspiring tinged with fear. Stubbs's works are essays in the "Sublime," suggesting a primeval state in which horses were prey to barbaric violence, long before being embraced by civilization. In the many variations on the horse-and-lion theme that he painted, Stubbs sought to elevate the painting of animals to the higher artistic category of history painting. His main patrons, horse owners, breeders and admirers, were deeply concerned with matters of pedigree and fascinated by the exotic origins of the thoroughbred. In the horse-and-lion compositions, Stubbs offered them imaginary scenes from the lives and deaths of their own horses' ancestors.
In his compositions of mares and foals, mostly commissioned or bought from him by noblemen who bred horses, Stubbs paid tribute to the peaceable realm of the stud farm and the extraordinary achievement of British breeders in creating the thoroughbred racehorse. Through the horses' groupings and body language, Stubbs took the opportunity to suggest interactions and relationships, the workings of equine family and community life.
In Brood Mares and Foals, the rocky outcrops in the background are recognizable as Creswell Crags, a range of cliffs in Derbyshire. Stubbs associated the crags with the idea of the wild, using them for his scenes of horses attacked by lions and for some of his portraits of Arabians, in which they suggest the origins of the Arabian in supposedly uncivilized lands. He may have meant to give a similar hint of the primeval to Brood Mares and Foals-the noble thoroughbred has emerged, through breeding, from raw and savage nature. In Stubbs and the Horse, this work makes its first public appearance since 1768.
Toward the end of his career, Stubbs enjoyed a spate of patronage from the Prince of Wales (the future George IV). Between 1790 and 1793, the prince commissioned no fewer than 14 paintings. Together they formed a series celebrating various pleasures of the outdoors-riding, driving, racing, the park, dogs and the military. The Prince of Wales series demonstrates Stubbs's flair for composition and staging, as, for instance, in The Prince of Wales's Phaeton, with the Coachman Samuel Thomas and a Tiger-Boy. A phaeton was a carriage built for speed, and the prince's "high-flyer" version was especially fast. In this painting, the prince's servants are getting the vehicle and a beautifully matched pair of horses ready for a drive. The choice of this moment of preparation underlines the importance, for drivers at this glamorous level, of maintaining a fine appearance - much of the pleasure and prestige of the sport lay in an impeccable turnout.
Publication
The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue, Stubbs & the Horse, published by the Kimbell in association with Yale University Press and available in hardcover for $50 ($45 for members) and $29.95 ($26.96 for members) in softcover in the Museum Store. This 229 page book features 110 color and 131 black-and-white illustrations along with eight essays.
Admission and Hours
Admission to the special exhibition is included in general museum admission, which is $10 for adults, $8 for senior citizens (65+), $6 for college students with ID (18-25), $2 for children ages 6-17 and free for children under 6 and for members. Admission to the permanent collection only is also free on Saturdays from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. and all day on the first Thursday of every month. Admission to Stubbs and the Horse will be half-price at those times. Museum hours are Wednesday-Sunday from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. The museum is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. The museum is also closed on Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The Walters will be open Monday and Tuesday, December 27 and 28 and is open on New Year's Day and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
The Walters Art Museum
The Walters Art Museum is located in Baltimore's historic Mount Vernon Cultural District at North Charles and Centre streets and is one of only a few museums worldwide to present a comprehensive history of art from the third millennium B.C. to the early 20th century. Among its thousands of treasures, the Walters holds the finest collection of ivories, jewelry, enamels and bronzes in America and a spectacular reserve of illuminated manuscripts and rare books. The Walters' Egyptian, Greek and Roman, Byzantine, Ethiopian and western medieval art collections are among the best in the nation, as are the museum's holdings of Renaissance and Asian art. Every major trend in French painting during the 19th century is represented by one or more works in the Walters' collection.
Peabody Court is the official hotel of the Walters Art Museum. This historic property is just around the corner from the museum and features George's, a full-service restaurant. For hotel reservations, call 1-800-292-5500 and ask for the special Walters discounted rate.
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