Captain Samuel Sharpe Pocklington with His Wife, Pleasance, and possibly His Sister, Frances

George Stubbs

National Gallery of Art

A man stands with one arm resting over the back of a chestnut-brown horse as two women approach the animal in this horizontal portrait painting set in a landscape. The people have pale skin, dark eyes, and ash-brown or gray hair. At the center of the composition, the cleanshaven man stands with his body angled to our left as he looks off in that direction. He has a rounded nose, a dimple in his slight double chin, and he smiles faintly. A black tricorn hat sits on his gray hair, which curls up over his ears. His uniform has a long, pearl-white vest over a high, bright-white collar. His knee-length red coat is open, and the side closer to us is tucked back behind a sword hanging on that hip. The coat is lined with navy blue and gold down the front and around the cuff we see. The vest and coat have gold-colored buttons, and a gloved hand rests on the scabbard by his side. He wears white britches and knee-high, black boots with spurs. One ankle crosses in front of the other as he leans gently against the horse. The animal bends one back leg to rest along the front edge of its hoof as it reaches its muzzle forward, toward the women to our left. One woman sits in a wood armchair in front of the horse as she holds some pink flowers to the animal’s nose. She has a bumped nose, dark brows, and her delicate, pale pink lips are parted. Her hair is teased high and covered at the back with a white cloth. A voluminous, pearl-white, hooded shawl covers all of her upper body except the proffered hand. The lace edge of the white skirt puddles on the dirt ground. Behind her, the second woman leans over her crossed forearms, which rest on the back of the chair. This second woman has large eyes and delicate features. The top of her hair is also covered with a cloth, and she wears a black choker and a black apron over a sapphire-blue and white dress. A thick-trunked tree behind the women fills the left half of the composition, and its dark canopy reaches almost across the top half of the painting. A few plants line the far side of the dirt ground to our right. An expanse of silvery water curves like a C around a rocky promontory in the distance, also to our right. Smoke-gray mountains, hazy in the distance, stretch across the horizon, which comes about a third of the way up the composition. Some steel-gray and pale peach clouds cover much of the ice-blue sky.