29 APRIL 1899, Page 7

Life of George Stubbs, R.A. Compiled by Sir W. Gilbey.

(Vinton and Co. .e3 3s. net.)—Stubbs must be ranked in the depress- ing category of " interesting " painters. He was enormously painstaking and industrious, and a pioneer in many ways in animal painting. A contemporary of Sir Joshua, he devoted himself to the study of all animals, but especiilly to horses. Great were the numbers of portraits of racehorses Stubbs painted, and in these he set the fashion of that type of art still extant in dingy inn parlours. Stubbs was really not an artist, but a man of science who recorded his researches in form and colour instead of words. Fancy going to Rome with the idea of settling if Nature were superior to Art; but this is, by his own account, what he did.