Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1981.25.617
Gallery Label:
Kept in the artist’s possession until his death, Stubbs’s painting depicts a female Cape mountain zebra that was brought from Africa to London in 1762 by a British warship and given to Queen Charlotte. Stubbs, who specialized in portraits of animals, made this meticulous visual record of its musculature and markings from direct observation. Small details, such as the position of the zebra’s ears, evoke its skittish nature, while the scale of the surrounding woodland foliage highlights the smallness of the species. Stubbs’s fictionalized backdrop is significantly different from both the grasslands of the animal’s natural habitat and the paddocks of the royal menageries in which she spent the final decade of her life. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2025