Animal magic ...
Eighteenth-century writers and artists went woozy in the face of sublime nature. For all his meticulous attention to anatomical detail, whether George Stubbs was depicting domestic horses or the more exotic beasts sent from Britain’s trading outposts, his paintings imbue his subjects with an intelligence beyond mere human ken.
Creature comforts ...
This Indian rhinoceros’s story was in fact a tragic one. After joining Gilbert Pidcock’s travelling menagerie in 1790, it was paraded from town to town for the amusement of awestruck English crowds. The rhino became partial to sweet wine, guzzling three or four bottles at a time. It dislocated its leg, presumably when drunk, and died from the resulting inflammation.
Let the mystery be ...
Yet for all the sad squalor of the rhino’s behind-the-scenes existence, Stubbs imbues it with a stoic nobility. Like Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, it stares away from its audience, ears pricked in contemplation of who-knows-what mystery.
George Stubbs: ‘all done from Nature’, MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, to 26 January
