George Stubbs was born in 1724 in Liverpool, son of a currier and one of five children.
He had a minimum of formal instruction: in 1739 he was briefly a pupil of the minor
painter Hamlet Winstanley. This was apparently enough to launch Stubbs off as a
provincial portrait painter. As such he worked in Wigan, Leeds, York and at Hull.
When at York he already knew enough anatomy to give private lessons to medical
students at York Hospital and this led to his commissions in 1751 to illustrate a book
on midwifery by Dr. John Burton.

His interest in anatomy and its studies continued all his life and proved to be important not only to his art but also a new contribution to science. In 1766 his first book 'The Anatomy of the Horse' was published.

In 1754 Stubbs travelled to Morocco. It is believed that a scene he saw there inspired his later picture 'Horse Attacked by a Lion' (1762-1765). In 1756, his son, George Townley Stubbs, was born by Mary Spencer who had become his common-law wife. In 1759, the family moved to London.

From the end of the 1760s he produced magnificent examples of the genre 'The Melbourne and Milbanke Families' (1769-1770) and 'John and Sophia Musters Out Riding at Colwick Hall' (1777).

In the 1770s, Stubbs embarked on new enterprises: he experimented with enamel painting. He consulted Josiah Wedgwood about the possibility of making large pottery plaques on which the enamel process could be used. In the great paintings that were still to come, he reverted to oils, mostly on smooth panels rather than canvas. An Associate of the Royal Academy in 1780, Stubbs was elected to full membership in 1781. The self-portrait of that year, executed in enamel on an oval Wedgwood plaque 'Self-Portrait' (1781), shows him at fifty-seven.

In the 1790s the Prince of Wales commissioned a number of paintings. In all, the 18 paintings by Stubbs, still preserved at Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace, show his powers undiminished and indeed in some ways strengthened as he neared the age of 70. Stubbs died in 1806, July 10, in poor financial circumstances.