Dr. Malcolm Warner, senior curator of the Kimbell Art Museum inFort Worth, spoke at the Meadows Museum Thursday about the18th-century British artist and anatomist George Stubbs and hisnoteworthy paintings of horses.

“Art was his whole life,” Warner said of Stubbs.”He worked day and night — work was everything tohim.”

Stubbs combined his interests in art and anatomy to produce amajor study of the equine anatomy. For 18 months, Stubbs isolatedhimself in a rented farmhouse and dissected horses. It was whatWarner described as “a messy beginning to an artisticcareer.”

Stubbs painted during the Enlightenment, and his work added to amore rational depiction and understanding of an animal the Britishrevered and upon which they relied.

“Every horse is a complete body portrait … distinctto every horse,” Warner said.

Warner also hopes to obtain Stubbs’ painting ofHamiltonian, a racehorse that nearly died during a race. Heaccentuated the horse’s bulging muscles and visible ribs, aswell as a vein across its nose.

The horse stands with its trainer and groomer, and Warner notedthat from one man’s stare, it is almost as if the viewer hasinterrupted a private moment of suffering.

Warner, whom art hisory professor Karl Kilinski introduced a a”thoroughbred scholar,” has been researching Stubbs foran exhibit opening at the Kimbell next November. The exhibit willinclude the artist’s unique, renowned paintings.