Mrs Dawson of Retford and Her Daughter

This 1750 portrait of Mrs Dawson of Retford and her daughter, at the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull, belongs to the earliest phase of Stubbs's career, before horses and animal subjects dominated his output. In the late 1740s and early 1750s, Stubbs was based largely in York and the north of England, building a practice as a portrait painter for the provincial gentry and professional classes. The Dawson family of Retford, Nottinghamshire, were prosperous local landowners, and a pair of family portraits — this work and the companion picture of Mr Dawson with his servant — was a standard commission for a family of their standing. The portrait shows Stubbs working competently within the conventions of mid-Georgian portraiture: formal but not stiff, the composition informed by the London fashions of Hogarth and Hudson without slavishly copying them. The Ferens Gallery holds both Dawson portraits, allowing them to be studied as a related pair.

Oil on canvas. The figures are arranged in the half-length portrait format standard for the period, with Mrs Dawson positioned slightly higher to suggest maternal authority. Flesh tones are built in smooth, carefully blended layers over a warm ground. The daughter's white dress provides a tonal anchor in the lower half of the composition.