The Lincolnshire Ox

George Stubbs painted The Lincolnshire Ox around 1790, depicting a prize agricultural animal — one of the enormous cattle bred for maximum beef production that were the pride of the new agricultural improvers of the late eighteenth century. Agricultural improvement, alongside industrial development, was one of the major social and economic movements of the period, and the prize animal portrait — like the prize racehorse — was a document of this ambition. Stubbs's ability to render the specific anatomy of extraordinary animals with scientific precision made him the natural painter for these subjects, his Anatomy of the Horse having established his credentials as the foremost scientific observer of animal form in British art.

Stubbs renders the ox with the same anatomical precision he brought to his horse paintings, set against a minimal landscape. The animal's massive proportions are accurately recorded, demonstrating Stubbs's scientific approach to animal portraiture.