Two Gentlemen Going a Shooting

Stubbs's Two Gentlemen Going a Shooting from around 1768 depicts English gentlemen engaged in the field sport that was simultaneously a social ritual, a landed right, and a practical means of procuring game—a subject that combined the portraiture and sporting documentation that were his primary commercial activities. The walking gentlemen with their guns and dogs were documented with the same precise attention to physical fact that Stubbs brought to animal subjects, and the landscape setting of an English estate gave the composition its social and topographical specificity. These shooting pictures served the same commemorative function as equestrian portraits—recording specific individuals engaged in the sporting pursuits that defined their social identity—while allowing Stubbs to demonstrate his landscape skills alongside his figure and animal observation.

The figures, dogs, and landscape are rendered with Stubbs's characteristic precision, each element observed with scientific accuracy. The broad English landscape provides a setting of quiet beauty for the sporting activity.