Yak

Painted in 1791 and now at the Hunterian Museum, Stubbs's study of a yak is among the most unusual animal portraits of the eighteenth century — a central Asian bovid that would have been almost entirely unknown to European audiences before living specimens began arriving in the early 1790s. The first yak to reach England alive came to the King's menagerie around 1791, and Stubbs was among the first European painters to study one directly. The shaggy, voluminous coat of the yak — quite unlike any European bovine — presents a significant challenge to Stubbs's usual approach of smooth, carefully modelled fur surfaces. The yak belongs to the same series of exotic fauna studies as his moose, rhinoceros, nilgai, and blackbuck, all produced for or associated with John Hunter's natural history collection. The paintings collectively represent a visual encyclopaedia of remarkable completeness for the period.

Oil on canvas. The yak's extraordinarily dense, shaggy coat requires Stubbs to adopt a dry, broken brushwork technique quite different from his smooth thoroughbred handling. He uses ragged, overlapping strokes of dark brown, black, and warm ochre to suggest the long, coarse fibres hanging from the flanks and belly. The massive, broad head is modelled with attention to the heavy horn bases and wide forehead.