Labourers

George Stubbs, 1724–1806

1781

Enamel on Wedgwood biscuit earthenware

Yale Center for British Art

Four men and a horse are depicted with a cart in a rural setting, with a building in the background. A dog rests in the foreground. In Labourers, George Stubbs depicts a team of brickmakers in the midst of a dispute about the backboard of their cart. This enamel is the third in a group of works based on the same composition. The first was an oil painting made in 1767 for George Byng, fourth Viscount Torrington, as part of a series depicting servants at his estate in Bedfordshire. The master potter Josiah Wedgewood was deeply impressed by the second version, also painted in oils, which he saw in the Royal Academy exhibition of 1779; the experience led Wedgwood to commission portraits of himself and his wife, Sarah, from Stubbs, rather than from Joseph Wright of D