Sir Sidney Medows (1701-92)

Sir Sidney Medows from 1778 by George Stubbs is an equestrian portrait of a military gentleman. The combination of formal portraiture with Stubbs's equestrian expertise made him the preferred painter for gentlemen who wished to be depicted with their horses. 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...

The equestrian portrait renders both rider and mount with Stubbs's characteristic dual precision in human and equine anatomy.