Greenland Falcon

Greenland Falcon from 1780 by George Stubbs is a bird portrait that demonstrates his ornithological as well as mammalian interests. Stubbs's bird paintings, though fewer in number than his mammalian studies, show the same anatomical precision. Stubbs's oil technique was grounded in exhaustive anatomical study—he spent eighteen months dissecting horses at a Lincolnshire farmhouse before painting the plates for his Anatomy of the Horse (1766)—producing an exactitude of musculature and bone...

The falcon is rendered with careful attention to plumage detail and avian anatomy, demonstrating Stubbs's precision applied to bird portraiture.