George Stubbs: 50 Chapters of an Imagined Biography

As he and Turner drew near Hambletonian Rubbing Down, John Hoppner, turning away from it with a frown, changed expression upon sighting Stubbs, as a constable might upon unexpectedly catching sight of the very malefactor he was seeking.

"I cannot believe it, Stubbs.  Forty years building a reputation as a horse painter, and you squander it on this?"

"I was under the impression that by your lights, such a reputation deserved no better than to be squandered."

"Oh, think not so!  In the house of art are many mansions.  If one cannot paint people, one can be excused for painting horses."

Turner rose to his companion's defense.  "The figures up there are as well executed as the horse, John."

"Really?  Then it makes no difference if Vane-Tempest is outraged, since the work can be sold instead to the grooms!"  He laughed unkindly, joined by his companion John Opie, who had overheard the repartee while studying the painting.

Opie turned to Stubbs.  "It's an interesting experiment, actually, but the poor baronet wanted to see his horse and not your experiment."

"It is the horse, drawn from life!" declared Stubbs.

"Really?  I doubt if anyone except you ever conceived of Hambletonian looking much like that," said Hoppner.

"That may be true, because I am an artist and most people are not--even some of high repute as painters." 

"Hmm!" said Opie to his companion, "I sense a reference to present company."

"An artist," continued Stubbs, "would understand that I observed the horse in process through an event, not as an image in a studio pose."

Hoppner assumed his familiar mixture of scorn and incredulity.  "'In process through an event?'  Are we talking of painting or pantomime?"

"And after we artists have been thinking all these years,"  said Opie, shaking his head in mock dismay, "that a key function of art was precisely to reduce process to image!  Reynolds must be spinning in his grave."

Stubbs turned away.  "On the happy day when Sir Joshua spins," he said over his shoulder, "it is his slavish followers who will become dizziest."  He led Turner back away from Hambletonian Rubbing Down, both to place the entire work in a single field of vision and to break off talking with Hoppner and Opie.  "You spoke of intangibility, Mr. Turner, but that horse is one of my most tangible creations."

"But how, if it is not taken from a fixed image--which even your eye couldn't be fast enough to capture?  Opie's remark was surely malicious, but doesn't it raise an important point?"

"No doubt.  The real issue, however, is the breadth of the artist's observation.  Suppose you describe Hambletonian Rubbing Down for me, as briefly as possible."

Turner, hand on chin, studied the painting.  "Well, it's a horse right after a race, completely exhausted but not able to calm its muscles.  It is attended by two grooms. . .

. . . Stubbs was awakened late one night by a pounding on the

door.  He threw on a gown and was surprised to find Cooper, an elderly coachman in John Hunter's service, waiting outside with a carriage.  "Doctor Hunter asks you to return with me to Earl's Court, Mr. Stubbs."

"Is the doctor all right?"

"Fine as can be, sir.  Oh, and you're to bring what you need for drawing, a good deal of drawing."

"But why in the middle of the night?"

"Nobody told me, sir.  All I know is that some great excitement's going on, and the doctor told me to bring you back any way I could.  Short of abduction, of course."

"That is a relief," said Stubbs, going back inside, where Mary Spencer, now wide awake, had lit the lamp.  &quo