Two Bay Hunters in a Paddock

The composition of two horses communing face to face seems to have increasingly interested Stubbs in the late 1780s and early 1790s. The tranquil and serenely bucolic setting – a paddock in spring, with clumps of burdock in the foreground, a low paling fence curving round to a thatched shelter and distant hills beyond – is equally typical of Stubbs’s preferred setting for his portraits of horses in the latter part of his career: the mood reflective and calm, the emphasis being on the noble dignity of the animals themselves.