George Stubbs 1724-1806

George Stubbs, self portrait

The son of a currier (specialist leather finisher) and leather merchant, he had a brief apprenticeship to a painter and engraver where he soon left as he objected to copying.

In around 1745-51 he studied human anatomy at York County Hospital. It was a subject which had long fascinated him, and I might speculate that he would have had an early introduction to anatomy as his father's trade would have doubtless brought him into contact with all the other processes of leather production from slaughterhouse upwards. This led to him contributing the drawings for a book on midwifery.

Illustration from "A Complete New System of Midwifery" (1751)

In 1756 he and his common law wife Mary Spencer spent 18 months dissecting horses, this cumulated in the publication of his book "The Anatomy of the Horse" ten years later. The original drawings are now in the collection of the Royal Academy.

In 1759 the 3rd Duke of Richmond commissioned three large paintings, as his work ws already seen to be far more anatomically correct than those of his peers, and his depiction of a short coat showed the animal's musculature to best advantage. Some of his work broke with tradition in having a plain background and the best known is "Whistlejacket".

Whistlejacket (about 1762)

This helped establish him as a major artist of the day. Many of his patrons were the noblemen who were to form the Jockey Club. He painted portraits as well as horses, often adding in a groom or stableboy portrayed in a realistic manner and pose.



Pumpkin with a Stable-lad (1774)

 In later life he painted a series of dogs, and produced some paintings of wild exotic animals which he observed in private menageries.



Zebra (1762-3)

 These were often developed into dramatic paintings often depicting horses startled or attacked by lions. The dynamic poses allowed him to fully illustrate the muscles and tendons to accentuate the drama of the scene.



Horse attacked by a lion (1762)

His work in studying the horse remains the principal reference work to this day and is required reading for trainee vetinarians.

Sketches at the Animalarium

The Animalarium is a small private zoo at Borth, Ceredigion, Mid-Wales. It was originally set up as a rescue centre for unwanted exotic pets, the most impressive of which is Rajah the leopard. I din't draw him as he was constantly prowling on the top of his shelter and was nigh on impossible to observe for more than a few seconds.

The owners are passionate and informative and encourage you to get closer to the animals where practicable- I came away having handled corn snakes, monitor lizards and having had a 3 stone boa constrictor draped over me- all complete firsts!

There isn't much shelter on site and on the day I visited the weather was changeable, but I cruised round with sketchbook and attempted to draw the animals, occasionally aided by my husband tempting them with tidbits from the feeding pots to get them near to where I stood.

I started with the goats, however they were restless as they were waiting for their feed time. I managed a study of an older billy who was content to sit and chew the cud.

The pony stood fairly still although he eventually moved away, hence the forelegs not being very accurate. I did find that life class has helped me focus on getting an overall outline down fast to begin with.
The meerkat sentry was the best model, as he only really moved his head. I didn't get the mass of his lower body, though, as it was bulkier where his weight settled in his seated position.

The lynx was only too happy to stay put- I think it was the female as she was smaller. The sun came out and she was half drowsing.
The emu was a quick capture of shape as the male chased his offspring (emu dads are the childrearers) back to the far side of their enclosure, previously I'd not been able to see all of him. I think the legs should have been a little further forward.

I made a second less detailed study of the lynx to catch the way her limbs were sprawled out.

The wallabies were busy feeding in their shelter. I kept to a simple line and I think it worked better than trying to put any tone in- the line shows their dynamic shapes better. The rhea (ostrich-like bird) was seen at a distance, when I went closer to photograph him he tucked his head under his body and resembled a giant fluffy toadstool on two legs!

The lemur was really only interested in being fed grapes. His brother had the same idea so it was difficult to settle him for any time between skirmishes. I managed to catch his wide-eyed "spectacles" okay, and was pleased when I later compared it to the photos I had taken.

The hornbill kept moving his head from side to side, athough from the angle I was looking at him from I could continue to draw by referencing the mirror image. I couldn't see his feet or lower body as he was sat among foliage at the time- I did get a couple of reference photos later.

The perfect model! I had great fun drawing this African Horned Turtle. Unfortunately he was flopped out against a support post, and in moving my head to see the rest of him I failed to get the width of his shell in the right place- the outer line shows where it should have been as I realised my mistake at the end.

As we were leaving, the wallabies came out for a walkabout. I again concentrated on their lines as they were moving around a lot, hence the superimposed studies rather than lose time turning a page.
There were many other animals I either didn't have time to draw or who just moved too fast- the marmosets being one example. There were also a couple of caymans in the reptile section but the dim lighting made them difficult to see. I came away with a good range of different animal shapes and felt I had trained myself to observe better than when I visited Newquay Zoo last year. Life class is not just about drawing people!

As a postscript, the final picture was done later in the week when I returned to my friends in Cwm Duad, and did a brief sketch of two of the horses grazing, from the same viewpoint as last year. Again, I think the overall shapes are better observed although I have not done any horse studies in the interim period.

The larger horse has thickset stubby legs as he is a draught breed. The smaller horse is a true Thelwell barrel-on-legs character- a miniature Shetland with a personality to die for.

Ben Nicholson and his still life pictures

 

Ben Nicholson had little natural drawing ability, and was pushed toward the study of art largely because his parents could not comprehend that he had not inherited their own talents. Finding himself enrolled at the Slade, he frequently bunked off classes with his friend Paul Nash, also a (self-confessed) draughtsman of ineptitude. Often they would play billiards at the Gower Hotel, where he later attributed the colours and forms of the balls as being an important factor in his road towards abstraction. His sole offering for the Slade’s in-house exhibition was a striped jug, and he left the school the following year.

In 1924, after his first forays into pure abstraction, he returned for a time to the humble jug and mug, which he painted in silhouette, with one or the other form competing for dominance in the space. These were much admired by Jim Ede, then assistant to the Director at the Tate, who as a result obtained several works either gifted by Ben or at a knockdown price.

The chance meeting with Alfred Wallis in 1928 was to have a profound effect on Ben’s approach to landscape, and later that year his painting 1928 (Porthmeor Beach, St Ives) included an architectural feature on the right-hand side (which Checkland construes as a gable end, but is more probably one of the dominant three arches in the pier at St Ives).

The picture is clearly painted over another image giving it additional depth, and is generally regarded as the precursor of these layered landscape/still life works.

Ben’s collection of mugs, jugs and jars was precious to him and travelled with him throughout his various homes during his life. Drawings of these are often simple outlines, often overlapping each other, superimposed onto an abstract background which sometimes have elements of landscape in them. He developed a signature fusion of abstract and realism during the war years, when there was no market for progressive “Modernist” art, and often portrayed views over rooftops and out of upper windows, a device he had previously seen in Cubism, combined with still life groupings in the foreground.

The works showing a more realistic and definite landscape setting he referred to as his “pot boilers”, or “Cornish best-selling schemes”, terms which were designed to indicate how contemptuous he was of the need to be so commercial, and they were produced purely from the need to bring some money in during the early years of his relationship with Barbara Hepworth, who had little time to work herself as she was exhausted from looking after the triplets and in poor health as a result.

Possibly the most prolific output happened in February 1945, when, having secured scholarship funding for the triplets to Dartington Hall in Devon, the pressure was on to raise the necessary balance, and he completed twelve paintings in just ten days, of “fishing boats and flags on mugs and still life generally”. These include the well-known images including Union Jacks, which are often erroneously attributed to a celebration of the end of the war in Europe, although in fact most were painted before VE day.

The series ranges from 1944 with works such as Carnstabba Farm (above), a relatively conventional view, to the late 1950s, e.g. August 1956 (boutique fantasque), in which the background has been reduced to fields of colour only suggestive of the landscape. In between, the landscape sits at varying degrees of tension with the still life elements, a particular example being November 11-47 (Mousehole) (shown below) where the realism of the scenery is at odds with the lopsided panel of still life shapes in the right foreground, and at the other end of the scale the later work 1959 Argolis, painted in Greece, synthesises the tabletop with the sky and sea completely.

 

While Ben himself clearly had a low view of what he achieved in these paintings, moving away from his ideal of total, pure abstraction, there is no doubt that he inadvertently hit on a unique pictorial style, one which has become as recognisable, if not more so, than the White Reliefs with which he first shook the world of 20^th century art.