[Phaeton im Sonnenwagen]

1754

A journey to Italy

He visits Italy, as he told Ozias Humphry forty years later, to convince himself that nature was and always is superior to art, whether Greek or Roman; having renewed that conviction, he resolves at once to return home. According to research published in 1965, the inspiration for his later lion-attacking-a-horse theme was not a trip to Africa, which he apparently never made, but an antique sculpture in the Palazzo dei Conservatori that he saw in Rome.

1756–1759

A farmhouse at Horkstow: anatomy of the horse

In 1756 he rents a farmhouse in the village of Horkstow, Lincolnshire, and spends eighteen months dissecting horses, assisted by his common-law wife, Mary Spencer; by other accounts he lives there until 1759, studying the life, habits and breeding of horses.

1759

Commission from the Duke of Richmond

Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond, commissions three large pictures of horses from him, and his career is soon secure: leading aristocratic patrons, having seen his drawings even before his book appeared, recognised that his work was more accurate than that of earlier horse painters such as James Seymour, Peter Tillemans and John Wootton. From then on Stubbs is a fashionable painter among the British aristocracy and a man of means.

c. 1759

Moves to London

Around 1759 he moves to London and works there on his major book, The Anatomy of the Horse.

1761

The Society of Artists' inaugural exhibition

From the inaugural exhibition of 1761 onwards he exhibits at the Society of Artists of Great Britain at Spring Gardens, until switching to the Royal Academy in 1775.

1766

The Anatomy of the Horse

His major work, The Anatomy of the Horse, is published; the original drawings are now in the collection of the Royal Academy.