Bay Hunter by a Lake

Bay Hunter by a Lake from 1787 by George Stubbs places a horse portrait within a landscape setting that adds atmospheric dimension beyond the parkland or heath backgrounds of his earlier equestrian subjects. The lake provides a reflecting surface that catches and transforms the light, giving the composition a tonal richness and mood of evening solitude unusual in his work. Stubbs increasingly incorporated atmospheric landscape into his equestrian subjects in the later 1780s and 1790s, responding perhaps to the Romantic interest in mood and environment that was reshaping English landscape painting. The bay coat—warm chestnut-brown with black points—is rendered with characteristic precision, the horse's musculature clearly defined beneath the gleaming coat. The work is held at Tate.

The horse is rendered with characteristic anatomical precision within a landscape setting, the lake adding atmospheric depth to the equine portrait.