This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A skeleton of one of the most remarkable racehorses of all time is to be an unusual addition to a major survey of work by the 18th-century painter George Stubbs.

The horse, Eclipse, was an undefeated racing superstar until he was retired to stud in 1771. Today, 95% of thoroughbreds trace their descent back to Eclipse and the remaining 5% have him in their pedigrees.

His skeleton is part of the collection of the Royal Veterinary College. The college will lend the skeleton so it can be seen alongside Stubbs’s anatomical studies of horses and his paintings of Eclipse.

It will be the biggest Stubbs exhibition for 35 years, showing at the new-look MK Gallery in Milton Keynes this autumn.

Anthony Spira, the gallery’s director, said there were pressing reasons for doing a Stubbs show in 2019. He said the artist was “one of the most forensic and empathetic chroniclers” of nature.

Spira added: “It feels really urgent to look at the natural world. We’re living at a time of extinction, species are disappearing every day and what better guide than George Stubbs to remember how to appreciate the natural world.”

Stubbs is known as a brilliant painter of horses but he was much more, said Spira. “He did the most extraordinary anatomical drawings, he was known as the Liverpudlian Leonardo … he was a genuine artist-scientist.”

The show will include what were groundbreaking and forensic drawings of horses made during an intense 18-month period of dissection and classification. Little-known anatomical studies of humans will also feature.

Horses will take centre stage, including the rare loan by the National Gallery of Stubbs’s best known work, Whistlejacket.

The exhibition is a sign of the ambition of the gallery, which reopened in March after a £12m revamp, doubling its size. It will come after the current Paula Rego show, which was given a five-star review by the Guardian’s Adrian Searle.

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Spira said the gallery wanted to have a mix of contemporary and historical shows. “The idea of having an old master in a modern setting is very exciting,” he said. “I think there is something very contemporary about Stubbs’ work, about the cropping and the backdrops and the plain backgrounds and that idea of empathy with the natural world.

“He had an excitement about discovering the natural world and the animal kingdom that is at complete odds with where we are today. It feels very urgent to appreciate how vulnerable and valuable the natural world is.”

The show will also include depictions by Stubbs of cheetahs, lemurs and his remarkable painting of a rhinoceros that was exhibited in 18th-century Britain.

After Milton Keynes, a version of the show will tour to the Mauritshuis art museum in The Hague for the first Stubbs exhibition in the Netherlands.

• George Stubbs: All Done from Nature is at the MK Gallery from 12 October to 26 January

• This article was amended on 11 July 2019 because an earlier version said the exhibition would open on 11 October. This has been corrected.