Two Gentleman Shooting

Between 1767 and 1770, Stubbs painted four shooting subjects which, when taken together, tell the story of a day's sport in four episodes. It is not known who commissioned them, or whether the initial one was originally conceived as the first of a series. The present work is a copy of the third work in the series which illustrates the successful shot (fig. 1). Stubbs's portrayal of the action of shooting flying birds would have been of great interest to his contemporaries, since it was still a relatively new technique. The gentlemen are shooting over pointers, invaluable for this type of shooting before the development of more organized days of shooting with driven game. The four paintings were engraved by William Woollett and published as individual prints between 1769 and 1771 by Thomas Bradford.