The Third Duke of Dorset's Hunter with a Groom and a Dog

The Third Duke of Dorset's Hunter with a Groom and a Dog

The Third Duke of Dorset's Hunter with a Groom and a Dog

Artist:George Stubbs (British, Liverpool 1724–1806 London)
Date:1768
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:40 x 49 3/4 in. (101.6 x 126.4 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Bequest of Mrs. Paul Moore, 1980

Stubbs's cool and accurate portraits of wild animals, dogs, and most notably horses with their owners, trainers, riders, or stable hands, appealed to and were much sought after by prominent sporting enthusiasts. It may be seen that he was also a gifted landscape painter. Although he received little critical attention from his contemporaries, Stubbs is now regarded as one of the most innovative English artists of the eighteenth century.

Catalogue Entry
This painting of a bay hunting horse was given to John Frederick Sackville (1745–1799), who in 1769 became the third Duke of Dorset, heir to the family fortune and the family seat, Knole, at Sevenoaks, Kent. The third Duke was a courtier, diplomat, and philanderer whose sporting passion was cricket. In a 1778 inventory of his belongings at Knole, the picture is listed as “A Horse and Groom—Stubbs 1768 / a present / [donor's name not recorded]” (Egerton 2007). While the canvas dates to the artist’s mature and most inventive period, Stubbs employed a standard format, somewhat in the manner of James Seymour (ca. 1702–1752), the leading horse painter of the previous generation. Stubbs’s landscape backgrounds vary from the specific to the Romantic; in the present case, Judy Egerton (2007) presumed that the setting is Knole. The thick tree trunk arching over the composition at left and the outsize burdock leaves in the right foreground are typical for this date, while the horse is unusually small in relation to the setting, considering that the picture is in essence an animal portrait. The handling of the sky and the dappled light in the foreground and middle distance contribute to the quality of the picture, the state of which is good for a work by Stubbs.
[2010; adapted from Baetjer 2009]

Copyright Image
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