Phaeton with Two Sitters

George Stubbs painted A Gentleman Driving a Lady in a Phaeton in 1787. The signed and dated picture, in oil on wood, probably oak, measures 82.5 × 101.6 cm. It is National Gallery NG3529. ^[1]

The horses have stopped, or seem about to move. Two dark bodies stand across the lower left of the picture; a carriage rises behind them, carrying a man and a woman. Both faces turn out towards us. Their elevated seat is surrounded by an extraordinary network of wheels, curved supports and fine connecting lines. The pleasure of the scene lies partly in that conjunction: living bodies and a delicately exposed machine. ^[2]

Although the people occupy the highest point in this foreground group, they do not dominate it by size. The horses' long bodies, the large rear wheel and the expanse of foliage all claim substantial areas. Stubbs makes portraiture share the picture with equipment and landscape. To understand the occupants' appearance, we have to look at what carries them, what draws it and how the whole assembly stands on the ground. ^[2]

Two horses and a web of reins

The nearer horse presents most of its body in profile. Its companion is partly hidden behind it, yet a second head, another neck and an additional sequence of legs establish the pair. Their heads are close without becoming a single shape. Slight differences in height and angle make each muzzle readable. The harness repeats across the two animals, joining their separate bodies into the ordered arrangement required by the carriage. ^[2]

Dark coats make light especially important. A narrow gleam follows a shoulder; a warmer strip reveals the curve of a barrel; a small pale area distinguishes a lower leg from the shaded earth. These are restrained accents. They allow the bodies to retain their weight and darkness while showing enough variation to prevent a flat silhouette. The horses remain substantial even where one overlaps the other. ^[2]

Look at the lines travelling backwards from the heads. Reins extend towards the driver's hands, crossing the open interval above the horses' backs. Other straps pass around the bodies and descend towards the vehicle. Some lines almost disappear against the dark coats, then become visible against a lighter patch of ground. Following them changes the painting from a collection of separate subjects into a connected system. ^[2]

The legs create a different pattern. They descend at slightly varied angles, leaving slender gaps through which the ground can be seen. Their spacing gives the pair a credible footing without making the lower edge mechanically regular. The heads incline and the ears break the long upper contour. Even in this relatively quiet presentation, the animals introduce small changes that differ from the repeated spokes and fitted curves behind them. ^[2]

The carriage made visible

The National Gallery identifies the vehicle's crane-neck construction as a means of improving its ability to turn. Its pale undercarriage is placed against foliage, making the mechanism unusually prominent. ^[1]

The nearest front wheel is smaller than the rear wheel. Their circular forms overlap different parts of the vehicle, while the far wheels are only partially exposed. This is a view at an angle, not a diagram laid flat. Nevertheless, Stubbs keeps the principal relationships legible: wheels touch earth, curved members rise between them, and the green passenger body sits above the intricate framework. ^[2]

That green body is compact beside the large rear wheel. Its broad side supplies a relatively calm area within the web of pale lines. A light strip runs along its upper edge, immediately beneath the woman. Her skirt descends into this part of the carriage, bringing clothing and upholstery into close visual contact. The people are neither detached busts placed above a machine nor swallowed by its construction. ^[2]

The buff-coloured structure repeatedly changes direction. Upright spokes meet a central hub; a curved support loops away; another long member carries the eye towards the horses. The alternation between straight and bent forms rewards slow attention. Mechanical detail becomes a pictorial resource, offering rhythms as carefully varied as those of branches overhead. Small patches of shadow give the light framework sufficient thickness to look built rather than merely drawn. ^[2]

A contemporary coachmaker helps explain why these differences mattered. In the 1796 volume of his Treatise on Carriages, William Felton separated phaetons by size and by their perch or crane-neck construction. He related their proportions to the horses intended to pull them. He also observed that fashionable patrons' driving skill and judgement influenced the patterns other buyers chose. A carriage was something to assess, specify and operate, as well as admire. ^[16]

Felton connected turning freedom with the distribution of weight. His discussion of large crane-neck phaetons warned that a sharp turn could overturn a high body positioned above the front axle. For a medium-sized design, he recommended setting the body farther back so its weight lay between the supports. These are explanations of choices available to builders, rather than a surviving specification for Stubbs's particular vehicle. ^[16]

His range was broad enough to include large phaetons equipped for long journeys and smaller arrangements with a coachman's seat for an owner who could not drive. The category therefore encompassed different uses and degrees of independence. Felton's account supplies practical context for the painting without requiring us to assign it an undocumented maker or purchase price. ^[16]

Driving as a social performance

Historian Ben Jackson places the phaeton within the expanding culture of pleasure-driving. Driving oneself made handling horses and a vehicle part of social display. In his study of eighteenth-century carriage consumption, he uses this Stubbs painting to contrast a relatively plain pleasure carriage with the elaborate coach employed for ceremonial appearances. Informality could itself be an expensive, carefully judged way of appearing in public. ^[17]

Jackson also draws attention to expenditure beyond a vehicle's purchase. Horses, their care and the upkeep of several carriages could make ownership more demanding than the price of a single carriage suggests. The neat appearance of an equipage represented continuing resources as well as a moment of display. ^[17]

Jackson's distinction helps us notice that splendour need not take the form of heavy ornament. The painting gives its occupants height, open air and conspicuous equipment, while the driver's hands remain visibly engaged. His place is part of the carriage's operation. The passenger sits beside him within the same compact body, sharing its exposure to the surrounding landscape. Their social presentation depends upon this arrangement of people, horses and things. ^{[17] [2]}

The gentleman's forward position makes his hands a hinge between figure and animal. The reins pass into that small area, then spread again towards the bridles. His bent knees and the darker forms beneath his feet give the seated body a practical orientation. The woman provides a quieter neighbouring shape. Together they form a close pair, but the direction of their attention opens the group towards the spectator. ^[2]

Their hats frame the faces differently. His dark brim is relatively compact; hers spreads widely and carries a high arrangement of pale feathers. White cloth gathers around her throat, providing a bright interval between face and jacket. The contrast helps distinguish the two people at a scale where facial details occupy very little space. Recognition is organised through posture, dress and placement as much as through features. ^[2]

The present title leaves their identities open. The Gallery has not established their names or whether they were married. Neither the horses' browbands nor their rosettes has supplied an identification. Calling the man a lord would add a social rank that the surviving identification does not establish. ^[1]

That uncertainty allows the visible relationship to remain specific without supplying an invented biography. The driver sits slightly forward; his companion is farther back beneath her large hat. Their bodies are close, but the hands, faces and clothing retain distinct areas. The painting gives us ample information about how they occupy the carriage, while withholding the personal knowledge that a family member might once have brought to it. ^[2]

A landscape arranged for the encounter

The large tree mass rises behind the passengers and fills much of the right side. Its darkness brings the pale hats, faces and undercarriage forward. Towards the left, the view becomes more open. A smaller tree stands behind the horses, and a distant band of ground separates their legs from the horizon. The space seems to expand in the direction they face. ^[2]

Near the centre, a slender group of tall trees interrupts the low distance. These verticals balance the horizontal sweep of horse bodies and reins without competing with the broad canopy. Above them lies a large field of sky. Its pale clouds create an interval between the smaller trees and the upper edge. The foreground assembly consequently feels carefully placed within a wider prospect rather than crowded against a backdrop. ^[2]

Ground and sky also moderate the stronger colours below. The pale wheels echo lighter tones in the clouded sky; the green carriage belongs beside the foliage, although its smooth, bounded surface differs from the broken leaves. Brown clothing and earth make a warmer connection. These correspondences bring the equipment into the landscape while its clean geometry continues to mark it as a constructed object. ^[2]

A panel with an experimental paint medium

The apparently conventional country scene also became an important subject of technical investigation. Raymond White, Ashok Roy, John Mills and Joyce Plesters published a preliminary study in 1980 after examining small samples from its sky and tree highlights. Their results suggested drying oil with another fatty material; stearine wax was considered a possibility. The identification was provisional. ^[18]

Mills and White revisited the painting in their 1985 research, using more sensitive combined gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. They now identified beeswax, alongside drying oil and pine resin. Their table also records a prepared ground. Additional animal fat or stearine remained possible. The presence of other ingredients prevented them from specifying which drying oil had been used. The later findings therefore refine the earlier account rather than simply repeat it. ^[18]

Their study connects the panel with Stubbs's experiments in painting media. It does not establish a complete working recipe or prove that he heated this particular picture. The authors' stronger suggestion of heat fusion concerned three earlier panels whose analysed medium lacked drying oil. Keeping that distinction preserves the value of the findings for this exact object. ^[18]

The Hope family connection and the public collection

The Gallery considers a commission from Liverpool's Hope banking family possible, although the first patron has not been identified. By 1888 it belonged to Charles Coates MD, who had married a Hope daughter, and was lent to the Royal Academy. It passed to his niece, Miss Hope, who bequeathed it to the National Gallery in 1920. The possible first commission remains less certain than this later ownership. ^[1]

The work continues to attract attention as a record of carriage design as well as portraiture. Alistair M. Duckworth's discussion of Stubbs and Jane Austen distinguishes this 1787 crane-neck vehicle from smaller phaetons in other Stubbs paintings. His comparison shows why the word phaeton alone does not describe a single fixed shape. Scale and construction remain essential to understanding what each picture presents. ^[19]

Here the achievement lies in giving those different demands a common setting. The horses retain bodily weight, the wheels and supports remain intelligible, and the two occupants turn the apparatus into a scene of human encounter. Among Stubbs's paintings, it offers an unusually concentrated view of movement held in reserve: a machine and its living power arranged for a journey that the picture leaves permanently about to begin. ^[2]