George Stubbs: A Celebration
This exhibition was held at the Walker Art Galllery 7 April 2006 - 30 July 2006
The label text for this painting in the exhibition 'George Stubbs: A Celebration' has been written by Noelle Gerstman, who was born on Merseyside and is now a science teacher in Miami, Florida.
'As a teenager, I came to Liverpool often. Then, I knew that Stubbs was a painter of horses for the aristocracy, that was all. I didn't know that he was interested in anatomy and it was that interest that lay behind his ability to execute pictures of animals.
Of the pictures by him in the Walker, this is the one I've always been most impressed with, by far. The man is landed gentry and he won the ox as a result of a cockfight - there's the cock that won it for him, in the picture. The ox is a well observed specimen and it's got much more life in it than most of Stubbs's horses. It's the tension in the horses that I don't like. This is a much more relaxed beast, and that's what appeals to me, though I wonder if it really was that big in real life.'
Read more about 'The Lincolnshire Ox' by George Stubbs from the Walker Art Gallery's collections.