A Lion Attacking a Horse

George Stubbs, 1724–1806

1762

Oil on canvas

Yale Center for British Art

A lion attacks a horse in a natural landscape. The horse rears up, its mane flying, while the lion bites its neck. From the early 1760s to the 1790s, George Stubbs returned again and again to the theme of horses stalked and attacked by lions. In his hands, the encounter took on the high drama of a scene from classical mythology, suggesting the struggle of civilization against barbarism. This painting is one of Stubbs’s earliest (and largest) explorations of this subject. It was commissioned by the young Charles Watson-Wentworth, second Marquess of Rockingham, for his London residence at 4 Grosvenor Square. Rockingham was a major figure in the worlds of horse racing and Whig politics and also commissioned the pendant painting of a lion attacking