Cheetah and Stag with Two Indians

Painted in 1765 and now at Manchester Art Gallery, 'Cheetah and Stag with Two Indians' is among the most culturally complex works in Stubbs's output. A cheetah had been sent as a diplomatic gift from the Nawab of Mir Kasim to King George III, and the two men shown with the animal are Indian handlers who accompanied the gift. Stubbs was commissioned to record the animal and its exotic context before the cheetah was released to hunt, a performance staged at Windsor. The encounter staged for the painting — cheetah poised to spring, stag nearby, handlers restraining — never quite happened as depicted, giving the composition a slightly staged quality Stubbs could not fully conceal. Nevertheless, the painting remains a unique document of cross-cultural exchange in the colonial period, and Manchester Art Gallery's holding places it within a collection strong in works touching on empire and trade. The Indian handlers are given respectful individual treatment, their faces and costumes carefully recorded.

Oil on canvas. Stubbs orchestrates a complex multi-figure composition with two large animals and two standing figures. The cheetah's spotted coat is painted with meticulous individual spot detail. The handlers' white and coloured clothing provides tonal relief against the warm landscape ground. Spatial recession is managed through overlapping figures and a distant landscape.