Horse Frightened by a Lion

George Stubbs, between 1762 and 1768

Download4000 × 2691 px View on a wall Edit

Artist: George Stubbs (British, 1724–1806)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 27 3/4 × 41 inches (70.5 × 104.1 cm)
Museum: Yale Center for British Art
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

Stubbs painted a number of variations on the theme of a horse being attacked by a lion. Given that animal painting was regarded by theorists as one of the lowest branches of art, he was quite deliberately testing its limits, showing animals in the kind of serious, dramatic encounter normally reserved for scenes from human history, the Bible, and mythology. Here the horse seems suddenly to have stopped, throwing its mane and tail forward, on seeing the lion emerge menacingly from the shadows of a cave.

A much earlier version of the present composition focusing on the horse's near-human expression was the subject of a poem by Horace Walpole: I feel his feelings: how he stands transfix'd! How all the passions in his mien are mix'd! How apprehension, horror, hatred, fear, In one expression, are concenter'd there! In 1777 Stubbs published his own etching from this painting and in 1780 used the print as the basis for a plaster mold from which ceramic bas-reliefs were cast by Wedgwood. Both the etching and bas-relief are shown in this bay.

Text: Yale Center for British Art.