- Type: Art Audio File
- Collection: European Art
- Culture/Region: Europe
- Subject Area: Visual Arts
- Grade Level: 9-12, College, Adult
John Lawrence (1753-1839), an early animal rights advocate and author on horsemanship, appraises Stubbs’s painting as follows:
It has lately been discovered, that Stubbs was merely an anatomist, without any genius as a painter; that his Horses are all alike, and that after you have looked over his portraits of Marske, Protector, Shark, Gimcrack and others, all that you shall have seen, is the anatomical figure of a Horse, by Stubbs, under different names. I have been told particularly, that his Shark is quite a different thing to the real Horse which my informant saw, a fine, gallant, gay, and airy stallion. Shark might appear so in the company of a mare, but whenever I saw him, and I saw him several times, he appeared precisely in that sober attitude and character, in which our great painter drew him; nor can I conceive a more correct, or more natural likeness.