Equestrian Portrait of Count Stanislas Potocki (Polish: Portret konny Stanisława Kostki Potockiego)[Note 1] is an oil painting on canvas completed by the French Neo-Classical painter Jacques-Louis David in 1781.

Jacques-Louis David was a major French representative of Neo-Classicism, a 19th-century style in European academic art profoundly influenced by the aesthetic order and monumentality of classical antiquity.

[4] Between 1775 and 1780, David lived in Rome, where he was influenced by the paintings of Italian High Renaissance and early Baroque masters, prompting him to abandon the Rococo style, then dominant in France, in favor of an approach characterized, in the judgement of the art historian Kathryn Calley Galitz, by its precise contours, well-defined forms, and refined surfaces.

[5][6] A prolific portraitist, David pursued commissions from an array of patrons, not only the aristocracy, but also what the art historian Allison Lee Palmer has called the "enlightened middle class".

[7] While the artist's political alliances shifted over time—he actively participated in the French Revolution before being appointed “First Painter to the Emperor” by Napoleon in 1804—David remained committed to the tenets of Neo-Classicism throughout his career.

[9] In 1776, he married Aleksandra Lubomirska, a member of the aristocratic Polish Lubomirski family, and began his political activity in 1778 as a deputy to the Sejm of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth from the Lublin Voivodeship.

[13] While Potocki's travels to Italy between 1779 and 1780, as well as his subsequent encounter with David, have been well documented, the exact circumstances of the portrait's commission remain a subject of scholarly debate.

[8][14] A collection catalogue published by the Potocki family in 1834 mentioned that "the portrait was completed in Paris after a sketch made from life in the Naples Riding School".

In the 1960s, Polish art historian Andrzej Ryszkiewicz challenged this narrative, asserting a lack of historical evidence to confirm that the 1780 encounter between David and Potocki in Naples had ever transpired.

[17] While Ryszkiewicz's claim influenced art historical research into the origins of the work in the subsequent decades, a 2019 conservation report from the Museum of King Jan III's Palace in Wilanów lent credibility to the account of David's grandson.

Art historian Antoine Schnapper notes that the presence of straw beneath the horse's hooves could suggest a stable setting, while the "stately architecture" in the background might hint at an imaginary or idealized backdrop.

[15][21] Schnapper also concludes that the "horse's forequarters" correspond to a 17th-century tapestry fragment illustrating the story of Publius Decius Mus, a 4th-century BCE Roman consul known for sacrificing himself during the Second Latin War.

[1] In examining the formal qualities of the composition, the French scholar of 18th-century art Charlotte Guichard highlights the atypical placement of the artist's signature found on the dog's golden collar in the bottom left corner of the painting.

He observes that "the Polish nobleman astride a perfectly poised, intensely muscled horse, head bent in submission beneath a dramatic mane" is depicted with great discipline.

[25] In his 1930 biographical study of the artist, art historian Richard Cantinelli noted that David began working on the Equestrian Portrait of Count Stanislas Potocki in Rome and departed for Paris on July 17, 1780.

[26] The exhibition was David's Salon debut and Potocki's portrait was shown alongside Belisarius Begging for Alms, Saint Roch Interceding with the Virgin for the Plague-Stricken,The Funeral Games of Patroclus, and a composition titled A Woman Suckling Her Child, all of which were praised by the French Enlightenment philosopher and prominent writer Denis Diderot.

[3] When discussing Potocki's portrait, Diderot singled out David's light color palette, which stood in contrast to history paintings completed by the artist during the same period.

He has soul, his heads have expression without affectation, his attitudes are noble and natural, he draws, he knows how to arrange drapery and make handsome folds, his color is beautiful (...)Although Belisarius Begging for Alms has received the highest amount of praise from contemporary critics,[28] Equestrian Portrait of Count Stanislas Potocki has since been described as one of the paintings that "cemented David's success".

In 1877, Aleksandra Potocka, August's widow, published an illustrated catalogue of the Wilanów collection, which included a reproduction of David's portrait of Stanisław Kostka Potocki.

[34][35][36]: 396  During Jacques-Louis David's bi-centenary exhibition in Paris in 1948, art historian Douglas Cooper described the portrait of Potocki as one of the "important works" missing from the show.