Lot 51: John Wootton (Snitterfield, Warwickshire c. 1682-1764 London)

John Wootton (Snitterfield, Warwickshire c. 1682-1764 London) The Meet: A hunting party, with figures, horses and hounds, in an extensive wooded landscape signed 'JWootton' ('JW' linked, lower centre) oil on canvas 36 ¾ x 58 1/8 in. (93.2 x 147.4 cm.)

93.2 x 147.4 cm.

Mrs. Ashton Tennyson d'Eyncourt, Queens Gate, London; Sotheby's, London, 30 June 1926, lot 112 (320 gns. to Ellis and Smith). with Knoedler, by 1928. Percy R. Pyne, Rivington House, Rosslyn, Long Island. William de Krafft; Sotheby's, London, 29 November 1963, lot 60 (£6,400 to the following), with Legatt, London, where acquired by the father of the present owner.

This exceptionally fine hunting group was probably painted in the 1730s, when Wootton was at the peak of his career. While packed with figures, horses and hounds, the artist has crafted a supremely elegant composition, and shows how superbly he had assimilated the lessons of his master Jan Wyck, antecedents such as Philips Wouverman and Aelbert Cuyp, as well as his debt to the landscape painting of Claude and Gaspard Dughet. Described by the Earl of Egmont in 1734 as 'the best painter of horses in England', Wootton was the pre-eminent artist specialising in sporting and landscape subjects for most of the first half of the 18th century. The date of his birth, in Snitterfield, between Warwick and Stratford-on-Avon, is believed to be 1682. Little is known of his family although as a young boy he may have served as a page to Lady Anne Somerset, daughter of the Duke of Beaufort, on her marriage to Thomas, later 2nd Earl of Coventry in 1690. From these families he appears to have received encouragement to take up painting, and perhaps also the introduction to his master, the Dutch painter Jan (or John) Wyck (1652-1700). Wootton was in London by 1706 when he married Elizabeth Walsh, although she died only five years later. His second marriage, in 1716, was to Rebecca Rutty, by whom he had two surviving children. He was a founder-member of the Academy of Painting and Drawing in 1711, and by 1717 had been elected a steward of the Virtuosi Club of St. Luke's. Popular, and astute in his affairs, George Vertue recorded: 'Mr. J. Wotton [sic] by his assiduous application & the prudent management of his affairs rais'd his reputation & fortune to a great height being well esteemed for his skill in landskip paintings amongst the professors of art & in great vogue & favour with many persons of ye greatest quality, his often visiting of Newmarket in the seasons produced him much imployment in painting race horses, for which he had good prices, 40 gns. for a horse and 20 for one of a half-leng cloth.' Wootton's many patrons included King George II, Frederick, Prince of Wales, Sir Robert Walpole, and many of the most prominent members of the aristocracy. The enormous entrance hall paintings he executed for Althorp, Longleat and Badminton all survive in situ, while his versatility as an artist is known through commissions for a pendant to a Claude owned by Henry Hoare, and a copy of a Dughet sea-piece for the Duke of Marlborough. He made a significant contribution to the development of a native school of painting in early 18th century Britain. The prominence of the lady in blue on a bay hunter in the group of riders on the left of the composition suggests that she was one of the relatively few aristocratic women of the period who was actively interested in the sport of hunting. That the young man nearby wears the star and ribband of the Order of the Garter is equally informative: for only a few representatives of the greatest Whig families were accorded that honour early in life. The picture must therefore have been painted for a member of the closely knit Whig world, from which so many of the artist’s major patrons were drawn. The evident youth of the man might suggest that he is Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough (1706-1758), grandson of the first duke, who in 1732 married Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas, 2nd Lord Trevor; she is known to have hunted herself. Wootton was less interested in the portraiture of humans than in that of their animals—one patron Lord Rockingham would go so far as to get the Stubbs to repaint the portrait of a favoured jockey, Singleton, in a picture by the artist—and so the identification cannot be decisively confirmed. But it is certainly persuasive as the duke not only commissioned a major sequence of canvases for the Hunting Hall at Althorp but also ordered a series of smaller pictures for Langley Park, his house in Buckinghamshire, where he also kept a large group of Venetian views by Canaletto. When his son sold Langley, the Woottons, like the Canalettos, passed to the Hervey family.