Harry Meade, Superstition and George Stubbs.
A couple of years ago I was commissioned by Musto to photograph the British Event Rider Harry Meade at his farm in the Cotswolds. As I found out while we were shooting, Harry - as well as being a world class sportsman - is also very knowledgeable about art. So while sitting for a portrait in one of his stables, the light and texture that I was using for the image was immediately familiar to him - he instantly referenced the little known French artist Jean-Baptiste Oudry whose naturalistic still lives of dead game echoed the soft light colours I was photographing. So we got chatting further about art and artists and so started the idea about trying to recreate a George Stubbs’ painting using photography. He immediately said “Lets do it”. So fast forward three years, and this is the result. This is Harry’s top horse, Superstition, set among a typical English Countryside.
Detail in the print is really important in conveying the texture of the image - which gives it the textured painterly feel. The image is very large, more than a metre on its longest edge and you can see some of the detail in the images below.
