Mares and Foals in a River Landscape

George Stubbs painted Mares and Foals in a River Landscape around 1765, one of his most celebrated compositions from the early period that established his reputation as England's greatest animal painter. The mares and foals — without riders or grooms — are depicted in the landscape with the careful anatomical precision of his horse paintings while the absence of human presence gives the work a different quality from his commissioned equestrian portraits: the horses exist in their own right, within the natural landscape, rather than as possessions to be documented. The frieze-like arrangement of the horses across the landscape, combined with the warm evening light and the river setting, gives the composition a classical serenity.

Stubbs arranges the horses in an elegant frieze-like composition against an idealized English landscape. His anatomical knowledge informs every detail of the horses' musculature and posture, rendered with precise, smooth brushwork and luminous color.