Horse Frightened by a Lion - YCBA Collections Search

George Stubbs, 1724–1806, British, Horse Frightened by a Lion, between 1762 and 1768

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Creator:: George Stubbs, born in Liverpool, England, 1724; active in England; died in London, England, 1806
Title:: Horse Frightened by a Lion
Former Title(s):: Horse and Lion
Lion frightened by a Horse
Date:: between 1762 and 1768
Materials & Techniques:: Oil on canvas
Dimensions:: 27 3/4 × 41 inches (70.5 × 104.1 cm), Frame: 32 3/4 × 46 1/4 × 2 1/2 inches (83.2 × 117.5 × 6.4 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:: Inscribed on verso of frame, lower center: "This picture|is the|property of|my daughter|Mary Dorothy|Barnett|and is lent|to me for|my life|H. M. Lowbridge|Baker"
Credit Line:: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:: Public Domain
Accession Number:: B1977.14.73
Classification:: Paintings
Collection:: Paintings and Sculpture
Link to Frame:: B1977.14.73FR
Subject Terms:: animal art | cave | danger | fear | frightened | horse (animal) | landscape | lion | rocks (landforms) | scared
Access:: On view
Link:: https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:5007
Export:: XML
IIIF Manifest:: JSON

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.

Gallery label for Connections (Yale Center for British Art, 2011-05-26 - 2011-09-11)

Stubbs painted a number of variations on the theme of a horse being attacked by a lion. Given that animal painting was regarded by connoisseurs and 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 myth. His horse-and-lion paintings evoke a world of savagery and danger, in which an animal so familiar to mankind as to seem part of civilization falls victim to the merciless law of the jungle. Always the horse's facial expression is anthropomorphic, like the equine translation of a head of "Terror" in one of the textbooks of physiognomy that were so popular at this time. In its extreme emotional and physical state the beautiful creature becomes "sublime" (a key term in later eighteenth-century artistic thinking), intended gently to touch the viewer's atavistic senses of fear, danger, and awe.
Some of his horse-and-lion paintings show the lion's approach, others the actual attack, with the lion sinking its teeth into the horse's back. He treated each episode against a variety of different backgrounds and with horses of different colors. 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. The artist's early biographer records that he studied the pose by having someone frighten an actual horse by pushing a brush along the ground toward it.[1]
A much earlier version of the present composition, probably its prototype, was the subject of a poem by Horace Walpole. Clearly Walpole was moved largely by the horse's near-human expression, and suggests that even David Garrick, the great actor of the age, might learn something from it:
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 terms pathetic we peruse his pain,
And read his pang through each transparent vein.
Through that stretch'd nostril see each feeling fly,
And Garrick's self might study close that eye…[2]
Walpole saw the earlier version at the Society of Artists exhibition of 1763. It can be identi?ed as one showing the lion and horse more or less as they appear in the present version, but with a different landscape setting, based on Creswell Crags (see nos. 44-47); the work is now in a private collection.3 In 1777 Stubbs published his own engraving from this, showing the design in reverse, and in 1780 he used the engraving as the basis for a plaster mold from which ceramic bas-reliefs were cast by Wedgwood.4 Like many of Stubbs's compositions, the Horse Frightened by a Lion was designed in a relief-like form in the first place, and so lent itself naturally to casting in actual relief. Clearly he considered it successful, and the present painted version is datable on stylistic grounds to the early 1790s, some thirty years after the prototype.

[1] Egerton 1984, 90.
[2] Walpole, 111-12.
[3] Egerton 1984, 94 (no. 62).
[4] See Egerton 1978, 74-74 (no. 72).

Malcolm Warner

Malcolm Warner, This other Eden, paintings from the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1998, p. 122, no. 48, ND1314.3 Y36 1998 (YCBA)

In a New Light: 500 Years of British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2025-04-01 - 2026-01-30) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Hogarth, Reynolds, Turner: British Painting and the Rise of Modernity (Fondazione Roma Museo - Palazzo Sciarra, 2014-04-14 - 2014-07-20) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

George Stubbs (Neue Pinakothek - Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, 2012-01-26 - 2012-05-06) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Connections (Yale Center for British Art, 2011-05-26 - 2011-09-11) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Stubbs & The Horse (The National Gallery, London, 2005-06-29 - 2005-09-25) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Stubbs & The Horse (The Walters Art Museum, 2005-03-05 - 2005-05-20) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Stubbs & The Horse (Kimbell Art Museum, 2004-11-14 - 2005-02-06) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

All The Queen's Horses (National Horse Racing Museum, 2003-04-26 - 2003-08-23) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

George Stubbs in the Collection of Paul Mellon: a Memorial Exhibition (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2000-02-14 - 2000-05-15) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

George Stubbs in the Collection of Paul Mellon: a Memorial Exhibition (Yale Center for British Art, 1999-04-30 - 1999-09-05) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Art Gallery of South Australia, 1998-09-16 - 1998-11-15) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Queensland Art Gallery, 1998-07-15 - 1998-09-06) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1998-05-01 - 1998-07-05) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Noble Exercise - The Sporting Ideal in Eighteenth-Century British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 1982-07-14 - 1982-09-19) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Painting in England 1700-1850 - From The Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon (Yale University Art Gallery, 1965-04-15 - 1965-06-20) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Carolina Brook, Hogarth Reynolds Turner : British painting and the rise of modernity, Skira editore, Rome, 2014, pp. 225, 279, cat. no. 75, fig. 75, ND466 .H65 2014 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 220-221, N590.2 .A83 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Malcolm Cormack, George Stubbs in the collection of Paul Mellon : A memorial exhibition, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1999, p. 45, no. 25, NJ18 St915 G54 1999 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Frederick J. Cummings, Catalogue of the exhibition : Romantic art in Britain : Painting and drawings, 1760-1860, Detroit and Philadelphia, 1968, pp. 51-53, N6766 C8 + oversize (YCBA) [YCBA]

Stephen Deuchar, Noble exercise : the sporting ideal in eighteenth-century British art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1982, p. 47, no. 74, ND1388 G7 D48+ (YCBA) [YCBA]

Richard Dorment, Beauty of the Beast, George Stubbs' meticulous paintings of horses made him greatest artist-scientist since Leonardo , Calgary Herald, July 9, 2005, p. G8, available online (Orbis) [ORBIS]

Judy Egerton, British Sporting and Animal Paintings 1655-1867 : A Catalogue : The Paul Mellon Collection, , Tate Publishing, London, 1978, p. 74, no. 73, pl. 28b, ND1383 G7 B75 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Firing the Artist, TLS, the Times Literary Supplement, Issue no. 3772, June 21, 1974, p. 669, Film S748 (SML) Also available Online in TLS Historical Archive (ORBIS) [ORBIS]

Luke Herrmann, The Paul Mellon Collection at Burlington House, Connoisseur, vol. 157, December 1964, pp.216,217,218, fig. 8, N1 C75 + OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Kentucky Horse Park, All the queen's horses, the role of the horse in British history , Lexington, KY, 2003, p. 67, no. 1.2, SF284 G7A55 2003 + (YCBA) [YCBA]

Julia Marciari-Alexander, This other Eden : Paintings from the Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1998, pp. 122-123, no. 48, ND1314.3 Y36 1998 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Robert Michael Neuman, Baroque and Rococo art and architecture, Pearson, Boston, 2013, p. 401, , N6415.B3 N48 2013 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Onno Dag Oerlemans, The Meanest Thing that Feels, Anthropomorphizing Animals in Romanticism , Mosaic: a Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, v. 27, no. 1, March, 1994, p, 1, fig. 1, Internet Resource [ORBIS]

Painting in England 1700-1850 from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, The Royal Academy of Arts Winter Exhibition 1964-65., , Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK, 1964, p. 74 (v. 1), no. 262, N5220.M45 R69 1964 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Constance-Anne Parker, Mr. Stubbs the horse painter, J. A. Allen, London, 1971, pp. 72-82, ND497.S93 P37 + Oversize (YCBA) [YCBA]

Paul Mellon's Legacy : a passion for British art [large print labels], , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, v.1, N5220 M552 P381 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Herbert W Rott, George Stubbs, 1724-1806, science into art , Prestel, Munich ; New York, 2012, pp. 170-71, cat. no. 40, NJ18.St915 A1213 2012 + OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Simon Schama, The Yale Centre for British Art, TLS, the Times Literary Supplement, , May 20, 1977, p. 619, TLS Historical Archive [ORBIS]

T. N., Memoirs of George Stubbs, Esq. the Celebrated Painter of Horses, The Sporting Magazine, vol. 32, July 1808, pp. 56-57, Sporting 2090 (YCBA Rare Books) [ORBIS]

Basil Taylor, George Stubbs: The lion and horse theme, The Lion and Horse Theme , Burlington Magazine, Vol. 107, No.743, February 1965, pp. 81-87, app. no. 15, fig. 38, N1 B87+ (YCBA) Available online on JSTOR [YCBA]

Robert R. Wark, A horse and lion painting by George Stubbs, Bulletin of the Associates in Fine Arts at Yale University, vol. 22, November 1955, p. 2, fig. 2, V 1983 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Malcolm Warner, Stubbs and the Horse, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2004, pp. 100-01,107, 179-80, cat. no. 40, fig. 101, NJ18 .St915 W37 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Yale University Art Gallery, Painting in England, 1700-1850, from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon : [exhibition at] Yale University Art Gallery, April 15-June 20, 1965, , vol. 1, W. Clowes and sons, New Haven, 1965, p. 46 (v. 1), no. 174, ND466 Y35 (YCBA) [YCBA]

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