Labourer

Labourer from 1781 by George Stubbs depicts a working figure, one of his studies of rural laborers that he produced alongside his more aristocratic equestrian subjects. These working-class subjects were exhibited at the Royal Academy. 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 structure...

The working figure is rendered with the same careful observation Stubbs brought to his animal studies, capturing the laborer's physique and posture with naturalistic precision.