Portrait of a gentleman, full-length, preparing to shoot

This canvas dates to 1776, at around the time that George Stubbs was engaged in producing a narrative sequence of four paintings of middle-class sportsmen that begins with Two Gentlemen Going a Shooting, with a View of Creswell Crags, Taken on the Spot and ends with A Repose after Shooting (exhibited 1767–70; New Haven, CT, Yale Center for British Art). In the present painting, the attitude of the pointer, ‘pointing’ towards the game, bears a striking resemblance to Stubbs’ two versions of The Spanish Pointer, dating to circa 1766 (Munich, Neue Pinakothek; and private collection), his Portraits of Two Hounds belonging to the late Duke of Richmond, now untraced and known only through an engraving by the artist published in 1788, and his portrait of Phillis, a Pointer of Lord Clermont’s, dated 1772 (Leeds, Leeds Museums and Galleries), after which Stubbs produced an octagonal enamel on copper three years later in 1775 (location unknown).
We are grateful to Alex Kidson, Brian Allen and David Fuller for endorsing the attribution to George Stubbs on the basis of photographs.