A Lion Attacking a Horse

One of the earliest and largest of the lion-and-horse subjects Stubbs returned to from the early 1760s until the 1790s, commissioned by the young Charles Watson-Wentworth, second Marquess of Rockingham, for his London residence at 4 Grosvenor Square. Rockingham moved in the worlds of horse racing and Whig politics and a few years later commissioned the companion painting of a lion attacking a stag; the museum notes that both paintings retain their original frames. Its label reads the encounter as classical drama — the struggle of civilization against barbarism — and the series is regarded as an early and significant example of the Romantic movement. Born in Liverpool in 1724 and self-trained, Stubbs made his name with horses, and this subject carried his animal painting into the history-painting register. The museum dates the canvas to 1762 and lists earlier titles for it, among them “Horse Attacked by a Lion” and “Lion devouring a horse.” It is held in the Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.