A Lion Attacking a Horse

Stubbs's Lion Attacking a Horse from around 1770, painted for Yale's collection, is one of the most powerful expressions of his lion-and-horse theme and a work that brought his most ambitious compositional exploration of the subject to a significant institutional collection. The Yale version deploys a more complex and dynamic figure arrangement than some of his other treatments, with the lion's full weight on the horse's back and the horse's body collapsed in extremis. These lion-attack paintings were recognized in his own time as his most philosophically ambitious works, engaging with the tradition of Stubbs as a painter of natural philosophy as much as sporting documentation. The subject's engagement with natural violence and the struggle for survival gave these works an intellectual dimension that distinguished them within his broader production.

The violent encounter between lion and horse is rendered with the same anatomical precision Stubbs brought to his calmer sporting scenes, the terror and aggression of the animals conveyed through scientifically accurate muscular tension and movement.