The horse and lion

Stubbs, George, after

Mezzotint on paper of a horse frightened by a lion engraved by Benjamin Green (1739-1798) and published by Robert Sayer (1725-1794) and John Bennett (fl.1760-1787) in London between 1774 and 1784. It is a modified copy of a painting by George Stubbs (1724-1806) now in the Tate (T06869). Stubbs produced a number of sequential paintings presenting an encounter between a horse and lion in the wilderness. The ‘Horse frightened by a lion’ was probably exhibited at the Society of Artists exhibition in 1763. Stubbs produced works in various media depicting the confrontation, all said to have been inspired by the Greek sculpture of a lion attacking a horse at the Capitoline, Rome.