George Stubbs

Catalogue entry

T03778 REAPERS published 1791

Engraving, mixed method, image and plate 18 15/16 × 26 15/16 (482 × 685) on hand-made laid paper 20 3/8 × 27 3/4 (517 × 705); watermark: a dovecote; variation on Heawood 1234, an Auvergne paper used in England c. 1784 Writing-engraving within the image bottom centre ‘REAPERS. |Painted, Engraved & Published by Geo: Stubbs, I Jan^y 1791. N^o. 24 Somerset Street, Portman Square, London. - ’; on the back, stamped twice by the British Museum (i) on accession, with no.1865-1-14-906; (ii) on transfer, as ‘British Museum Duplicate’, endorsed ‘JKR’ in ink (initials of John K. Rowlands, Keeper of Prints and Drawings, British Museum)
Transferred by the Trustees of the British Museum 1983
Prov: ...; purchased by the British Museum from Mr Daniell (from whom sixteen other Stubbs prints were purchased at the same time: presumably the print dealer F.B. Daniell) 1865; transferred to the Tate as a duplicate 1983
Lit: Basil Taylor, The Prints of George Stubbs, 1969, no.16, repr. p.49; Richard Godfrey, ‘George Stubbs as a Printmaker’, Print Collector's Newsletter, XIII, no.4, 1982, p.116

Engraved in reverse direction after the oil painting of 1785 now in the Tate Gallery, T02257. In the engraving Stubbs has brought the figures of the central girl and the man on horseback into more prominence by bringing them forward and enlarging them in proportion to the other figures.

Stubbs invited subscriptions for the publication of ‘Reapers’ and its companion ‘Hay-Makers’, at ‘Two Pounds Ten Shillings the Pair’, in a printed prospectus dated 24 September 1788 (repr. Judy Egerton, George Stubbs, 1984, p.225), in which he also advertised prints he had already published.

Published in:
The Tate Gallery 1982-84: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions, London 1986

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