Soldiers of the 10th Light Dragoons

Soldiers of the 10th Light Dragoons from 1793 by George Stubbs depicts cavalry soldiers with their mounts, combining military portraiture with equestrian painting. The military commission reflects the importance of cavalry in British warfare during the Revolutionary Wars. 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...

The mounted soldiers and their horses are rendered with Stubbs's dual precision in human and equine anatomy, the military accoutrements depicted with documentary accuracy.