One of the reasons that Stubbs had an ambivalent, if not hostile attitude to the Royal Academy in spite of being elected an Associate in 1780 and full member not long afterwards must be that he remained loyal to the Society of Artists when so many prominent artists left it to found the Academy:  not just loyal, but he became its Treasurer in 1768, the year of the Academy’s foundation, and President from October 1772 to October 1773.   It was only in 1775 that he began to exhibit with the Royal Academy, having presumably realised that he had backed the wrong horse.