Laetitia, Lady Lade, 1793 (oil on canvas)

Laetitia, Lady Lade (d. 1825) The Royal Collection holds an important group of paintings by George Stubbs; all of them were acquired by George IV when Prince of Wales and all of them (with the exception of OM 1115, 400512) were sent in 1822 from Carlton House to the King’s Lodge (later Royal Lodge) in Windsor Great Park, presumably as an appropriate setting for sporting paintings. In 1793 Thomas Allwood presented a bill to the Prince for £110 16s, for ‘Carving & Gilding eight Picture frames of half length size [40 x 50 inches] for sundry Pictures painted by Mr Stubbs’. This is one of thirteen paintings in the collection of these dimensions (40 x 50 inches), all in identical frames and all dated between 1790 and 1793 (OM 1109-12, 1115-8, 1122-6, 400142, 400106, 400995, 400997, 400512, 400560, 400994, 400587, 400510, 400562, 400943, 405001, 400549). It is not possible to say which were the eight mentioned in Allwood’s bill, and how they might have been grouped or paired off; but they all seem to have been conceived loosely as a set. Laetitia, Lady Lade, was the wife of Sir John Lade. She was a notorious adventuress and renowned as a skilled rider. Her reputation for using bad language made her unpopular among the fashionable ladies at court, but she and her husband were both friends of the Prince of Wales. She is here shown mounted at full-length on a rearing bay horse in profile to the left, wearing a blue riding habit with a charcoal grey plumed top hat; a tree trunk to the right, the branches of which occupy the entire top of the canvas; park and pond beyond.