Reaper

Reaper from 1795 by George Stubbs is a late work depicting a working horse, a departure from the thoroughbreds and hunters that dominated his output. The working horse subject reflects the agricultural economy that underpinned British rural life. Stubbs's oil technique was grounded in exhaustive anatomical study—he spent eighteen months dissecting horses at a Lincolnshire farmhouse before painting the plates for his Anatomy of the Horse (1766)—producing an exactitude of musculature and bone...

The working horse is rendered with the same anatomical precision Stubbs brought to thoroughbreds, his late technique maintaining the scientific accuracy of his career-long study.