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Hardback or paperback – 297 x 210 mm – 76 pages

Reproduces all of Stubb’s etchings

Hardback ISBN 9781843682486 (FORTHCOMING)

Paperback ISBN 9781843682479

A superb new reprint of one of the classics of British art and science.

George Stubbs (1724-1806) was one of the most original artists Britain has produced. Such is the present reputation of his paintings, with their astonishingly convincing portraits of both animals and people, that it is easy to forget how much his success was based on rigorous scientific observation. In 1756 he rented an out-of-the-way farmhouse in north Lincolnshire where he erected a special scaffold to hold the cadavers of horses as he dissected and drew. (It is said that he had a particularly strong stomach when it came to smells.) After eighteen months of single-minded dedication Stubbs produced the drawings for The Anatomy of the Horse, which he later etched himself. The result was a sensation. Letters of congratulation coming from scientists from all over Europe, amazed not only at the perfection of the finished work, but that it had been produced privately, without any patronage. The Anatomy remained a textbook for artists and scientists for well over a century, and to this day the strange, spare beauty of these prints continues to fascinate.

This edition reproduces all Stubbs’ etchings and is taken from the 1853 printing, the last to use Stubbs’ original plates. The full text of Stubbs’ commentary is included for the veterinarially minded. Extensive texts by Constance Anne Parker and Oliver Kase place Stubbs’ work in the context of his life and times, and of 18th-century medical science.

The subtle forms and modelled curves and planes in a skeleton were to George Stubbs what a symphony is to a musician.
Oxford Companion to Art

The most unique thing of its kind ever compiled. This heroic effort, an epic of the eighteenth century, is as great and unselfish a work as anything could be.
Sir Alfred Munnings

Stubbs is, next to Leonardo, the greatest painter-scientist in the history of art.
Basil Taylor