Curator's Introduction to Stubbs: Portrait of a Horse

Clear and useful online lecture from the National Gallery introducing their exhibition on Stubbs marking the loan of a portrait of a horse called Scrub.

Mary McMahon, curator of the show, introduced us to Scrub and set him in the context of Stubbs career. She took us through the artists career and in particular his paintings, or as she argued portraits of horses.

The painting is shown with examples from two of his other projects on horses, an anatomical study for which he dissected horses and drew the structure of their muscles and skeleton, and an attempt to paint all the major thoroughbred horses of the period called “The Turf Project”.

I went to the show a few days later and found this to have been an excellent introduction to the show and it meant I got a lot more from the display.

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