#Masters of anatomy bishop series

The original drawings are now in the collection of the Royal Academy. He moved to London in about 1759 and in 1766 published The anatomy of the Horse. In 1756 he rented a farmhouse in the village of Horkstow, Lincolnshire, and spent 18 months dissecting horses, assisted by his common-law wife, Mary Spencer. Forty years later he told Ozias Humphry that his motive for going to Italy was, 'to convince himself that nature was and is always superior to art whether Greek or Roman, and having renewed this conviction he immediately resolved upon returning home'. In York, from 1745 to 1753, he worked as a portrait painter, and studied human anatomy under the surgeon Charles Atkinson, at York County Hospital, One of his earliest surviving works is a set of illustrations for a textbook on midwifery by John Burton, Essay towards a Complete New System of Midwifery, published in 1751.

He had had a passion for anatomy from his childhood, and in or around 1744, he moved to York, in the North of England, to pursue his ambition to study the subject under experts. Thereafter as an artist he was self-taught. Having initially demonstrated his abilities and agreed to do some copying work, Stubbs had access to and opportunity to study the collection at Knowsley Hall near Liverpool, the estate where Winstanley was then residing however, he soon left when he came into conflict with the older artist over exactly which pictures he could work on copying. Stubbs subsequently approached the Lancashire painter and engraver Hamlet Winstanley, and was briefly engaged by him in a sort of apprenticeship relationship, probably not more than several weeks in duration. While initially resistant, Stubbs's father (who died not long after in 1741), eventually acquiesced in his son's choice of a career path, on the condition that he could find an appropriate mentor. Stubbs worked at his father's trade until the age of 15 or 16, at which point he told his father that he wished to become a painter.

#Masters of anatomy bishop series

Information on his life until the age of 35 or so is sparse, relying almost entirely on notes made by Ozias Humphry, a fellow artist and friend Humphry's informal memoir, which was not intended for publication, was based on a series of private conversations he had with Stubbs around 1794, when Stubbs was 70 years old, and Humphry 52.

Stubbs was born in Liverpool, the son of a currier, or leather-dresser, John Stubbs, and his wife Mary. 1769), oil on canvas, 97 x 149 cm., National Gallery