The Hunters leave Southill

George Stubbs depicted this hunting party departing from Southill, a grand English country estate. Riders and their mounts gather before the house as hounds mill about, eager for the chase. Stubbs rendered each horse with the anatomical precision that made him the greatest equestrian painter in British history.

Stubbs famously dissected horses to understand their musculature, publishing his findings in "The Anatomy of the Horse" (1766). His sporting paintings captured the aristocratic world of hunting and racing that defined Georgian England. Though this work is in a private collection, major Stubbs paintings hang at the Tate, the National Gallery, and the Yale Center for British Art.