James Stanley

James Stanley from 1755 by George Stubbs is an early portrait from before the publication of his Anatomy of the Horse in 1766. The portrait demonstrates Stubbs's developing skills as a painter of both human and equine subjects. Stubbs painted primarily in oil on canvas and board, achieving a distinctive cool clarity through a careful layered technique built over a white ground. His seven years of dissecting horses in a remote Lincolnshire farmhouse gave his animal painting an anatomical autho...

The early portrait shows Stubbs developing his approach to combining human portraiture with equestrian elements.