George Stubbs review: sleek, sublime animals versus enslaved, absurd humans

MK Gallery, Milton Keynes
As this wonderful show makes clear, the artist celebrated for his paintings of horses was no less adept at other animals – while his portraits of humans drip with disdain

Surely George Stubbs can’t have recalled his own birth? In his icily brilliant illustrations for a book on midwifery, the 18th-century artist and anatomist depicts the process of delivering a child. Compressed and twisted babies lie in dissected wombs, or aim their heads at a narrow pelvic opening. Is it too much to see – in this uncomfortable study of birth – the early autobiography of this curious genius?

While Stubbs may not have been recalling his own birth, it’s worth pointing out that John Burton, the author of the midwifery book, is the model for Dr Slop in Tristram Shandy. The narrator of Laurence Sterne’s madcap 1759 novel actually does remember how he came into the world – starting with his conception. So it’s fitting that this uneasily beautiful survey of Stubbs begins with images of what Sterne called the little human “homunculus”.

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