Lions and lioness: rocky background

George Stubbs's Lions and Lioness: Rocky Background (1776) reflects the eighteenth-century English painter's fascination with wild animals that extended beyond his celebrated horse paintings. Stubbs, whose rigorous anatomical studies made him the greatest animal painter in English art, studied lions and other exotic animals at private menageries and at the Tower of London, which housed a royal collection of wild beasts. His images of lions — whether in combat with horses or resting in rocky landscapes — demonstrate his scientific interest in comparative anatomy and his Romantic sensitivity to the power and beauty of wild nature.

Stubbs's anatomical precision is evident in the carefully observed musculature and skeletal structure of the lions, rendered with the same scientific rigor he applied to his horse paintings, while the rocky setting is treated with broader, more atmospheric handling.