Red Deer

Two deer cross an open patch of ground, yet their attention draws them back towards one another. The stag advances to the right while turning his head towards the hind behind him. Her raised head answers his backward glance. Stubbs gives the pair a common direction without making their movements identical.

The painting, signed and dated 1792, belongs to the Royal Collection as RCIN 400549. Its current title is Red Deer: A Stag and a Hind. Painted in oil on canvas, it measures 101.4 × 128.0 cm. ^[1]

Movement held within a glance

The stag is the larger and more conspicuous animal. His pale flank catches the light, while the darker neck lifts his head above the hind’s. The antlers extend into the sky, giving his outline a height and complexity which the smaller animal’s profile does not share. Both bodies remain clearly legible against the ground behind them.

The difference in their poses matters as much as the difference in scale. The stag’s body leads towards the right-hand edge, but his head turns across that movement. The hind follows with her neck reaching forwards and upwards. Between the two faces, Stubbs leaves an interval which makes the direction of each gaze unusually easy to read.

Their legs suggest a measured advance rather than a sudden flight. The hind reaches a foreleg into the space ahead; the stag’s legs make a more compact arrangement beneath his body. Neither animal is shown leaping across an obstacle or straining away from pursuit. Their progress gives the foreground a quiet horizontal rhythm.

There is no human figure to explain the encounter. No keeper holds a lead, and no rider or dog presses the animals onwards. The heads and legs must supply the action themselves. Stubbs makes a change of direction within an otherwise simple movement the principal event of the picture.

Trees, antlers and a boundary

The landscape opens around this exchange. Tall trunks rise at the left, and spreading branches occupy much of the upper half. The hind remains close to that wooded side; the stag stands against a broader expanse of sky. The movement from shade towards openness is therefore also a movement from one animal to the other.

The antlers answer the branches without becoming part of them. Their pale points remain separate against the cloud, while the tree limbs spread more densely across the darker foliage. This gives the stag’s head a second role within the design: it links the low procession of bodies to the branching forms overhead.

Light also separates the animals from their surroundings. Warm colour runs across their sides, while the space under their bodies and between their legs is darker. The hind’s comparatively slender neck forms a light upward passage towards her face. On the stag, the much darker neck makes the turn of the head more emphatic.

At the right, a pale fence crosses the middle distance. Its closely repeated uprights are small beside the deer and the trees, but their regularity distinguishes them from both. Beyond it, the ground rises towards a low horizon. The picture’s spaciousness includes a visible boundary, rather than offering an uninterrupted view into woodland.

Deer kept for a prince

The Royal Collection associates the picture with the future George IV, then Prince of Wales. In 1790 he received at least twenty-nine red deer, at fifty guineas a pair, for Bagshot and Kempshott. The background may represent one of those estates, but remains unidentified. ^[1]

The royal sporting establishment helps explain the significance of managed deer. Christopher Golding’s history of Kempshott quotes William Poyntz’s hunt diary for 1 January 1791. An old New Forest stag was released near Kempshott Clump, ran through the park and neighbouring woods, and was taken by the hounds near the kitchen-garden wall and paddocks. The account describes an organised pursuit beginning with an animal deliberately turned out. ^[15]

Professional skill supported that activity. Writing retrospectively in 1865, James Edward Austen-Leigh recalled the Prince’s wish to employ Sharpe as his huntsman. Sharpe reportedly preferred foxhunting and initially resisted a position involving staghunting. The story distinguishes the different kinds of expertise required within a royal hunting household. ^[16]

A stag and his “favourite doe”

Earlier descriptions readily turned the backward glance into a small story. In his 1898 book on Stubbs, Walter Gilbey listed the work as A Buck and Doe. He imagined the stag leading his “favourite doe” and looking back to check that everything was safe. His account made the larger animal a protective companion. ^[17]

The modern terminology is more precise. Male red deer are stags and females hinds. The British Deer Society describes social arrangements which vary with habitat: larger groups on open ground are generally separated by sex outside the rut, while woodland deer may occur singly or in groups of mothers and calves. A painted male-and-female pairing therefore need not be understood as a permanent domestic couple. ^[18]

From a royal collection to a dining room

The picture was presumably painted for the Prince. It was recorded in store at Carlton House in 1816 and 1819, moved to the King’s Lodge in Windsor Park in 1822, and was at Cumberland Lodge in 1844. It belongs to a group of thirteen similarly sized Stubbs paintings dating from 1790–93. ^[1]

Matching dimensions do not establish a particular pairing. The Royal Collection records Thomas Allwood’s 1793 bill for eight frames, but cannot identify which pictures within this group it covered. ^[1]

Gilbey’s later description places the deer in the dining room at Cumberland Lodge, then the residence of Prince Christian, the Ranger. Paintings of people with horses and dogs surrounded them, with a large window overlooking the royal park. Gilbey praised the light for examining the pictures. The display joined a view of the actual park to painted animals within a room used for everyday meals. ^[17]

Looking again at the pair

When the painting appeared in Stubbs and the Wild at the Holburne Museum in 2016, Marina Vaizey again gave the hind a recognisably human character. Her review described the following female as “demure”, while drawing attention to the fence and the pair’s place within a captive herd. The apparently natural encounter could also reveal the limits enclosing it. ^[19]

Gilbey’s protective stag and Vaizey’s reserved female demonstrate how readily viewers build a relationship from the two poses. Both responses give the backward glance a narrative direction. The painting also rewards a slower attention to the means which make those readings possible: unequal bodies, opposed heads, a shared route and a carefully maintained gap. ^{[17] [19]}