Freeman, the Earl of Clarendon's gamekeeper, with a dying doe and hound
Date:
1800
Materials & Techniques:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
40 x 50 inches (101.6 x 127 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1985.19.5
Gallery Label:
This has been described as George Stubbs’s most enigmatic painting. It depicts Thomas Freeman, the Earl of Clarendon’s gamekeeper, grasping an injured doe and preparing to dispatch it with the small knife he holds in his right hand. The picture is one of contrasts: between life (embodied by the lively staghound) and imminent death (the injured doe); and between light (the trio of bodies in the foreground) and encroaching darkness (the forest background). Freeman, who wears a puzzling expression, looks up, as if staring out at the spectator—as does the doe—perhaps implying a comparison between man and beast. Stubbs was perhaps thinking about his own mortality: he completed this work in the twilight of his life, when he was seventy-six years old. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016