The Reapers

Stubbs's Reapers from 1783 shows him extending his talents beyond animal painting to encompass the world of agricultural labor in a series of works depicting harvest activities that occupied his interest alongside his equestrian subjects. The reapers series—depicting the human beings who harvested the grain on the aristocratic estates where his horses were bred and trained—gave Stubbs a vehicle for connecting his two primary visual worlds: the natural landscape and the human beings whose labor shaped it. His reapers have the same quality of precise anatomical observation as his horses, each figure's posture and gesture rendered with the attention to physical fact that characterized all his figure work. The 1783 date places this in his late career when he was diversifying his subjects beyond pure equestrian painting, demonstrating the breadth of his naturalist observation.

The harvest figures are rendered with careful anatomical observation within an idealized landscape setting. Stubbs's precise, enamel-like technique creates clear, luminous surfaces that give the pastoral subject a timeless, classical quality.