Stubbs's “Drill and albino hamadryas baboon” in conjectural historical context

Abstract

This painting by George Stubbs (1724–1806) was probably commissioned by John Hunter (1728–1793) as a visual record of two poorly known exotic primates, the drill, Mandrillus leucophaeus (F. Cuvier), and a hamadryas baboon, Papio hamadryas (L.), at a time when there was confusion about the different kinds of apes and monkeys. The drill is supported in his erect posture by a staff, which can be read as proof of this ape's proximity to man, but also of its less-than-human status. At that time, Rousseau and Monboddo viewed apes as progenitors of mankind, while David Hume's concept of conjectural history attempted to reconstruct how human nature might have changed during savage man's passage from nature to culture. Hunter, with his many preparations of monkeys and apes and his views on gradation, was interested in this topic. Stubbs's depictions of two other macaques, a crab-eating macaque, Macaca fascicularis (Raffles), and a Barbary ‘ape’, Macaca sylvanus (L.), indicate that he had seen the three main types of monkey and ape as perceived in the eighteenth century: monkey, baboon and ‘ape’, creatures then discriminated by their tails. His painting of a crab-eating macaque holding a peach may symbolize monkeys' muteness – a supposed indication of their higher rationality.