Haymakers

George Stubbs painted Haymakers around 1785, a rural labor scene that is unusual in his primarily equestrian and zoological output. The haymaking season — the major annual agricultural event when the grass was cut, dried, and gathered before the autumn — was a subject with a long tradition in European art from the Flemish calendar illustrations onward, and Stubbs's version treats the agricultural workers with the same attentive observation he brought to his horse and animal subjects. The figures are rendered with his characteristic combination of scientific precision and pictorial dignity, the haymakers' physical labor given the formal organization and the warm afternoon light of the landscape tradition.

Stubbs applies paint in thin, enamel-like layers that give the surface a luminous clarity. The figures are arranged in a decorative frieze against a warm summer landscape, with careful attention to the anatomy of both humans and horses.