John Wootton

John Morrison, 1st Baron Margadale (1906-1996), Islay House, Argyll;
His sale, Glasgow, Christie's, 19 September 1985, lot 470 (bt. for £220,000);
With Richard Green, London, from whom purchased by the present owner in 1986.

London, Richard Green Gallery, Annual Exhibition of Sporting Paintings, 1986, no. 2 (reproduced on front cover).

The painting is paler in tone and slightly more muted in colour than the catalogue illustration would suggest. The canvas has been relined and as the result the paint surface has been slightly pressed to the detriment of the lighter pigments in the background landscape and trees. Otherwise the paint surface appears to be in very good condition with no apparent damage or loss of paint. There appears to be a discoloured varnish overall. Examination under ultraviolet light confirms the presence of a milky varnish and reveals minor scattered infilling throughout the sky as well as strengthening to the leaves in the trees on the left and to the branches in the upper right. There are also minor areas of old retouching to the areas around the rider which include areas of strengthening to the folds of his jacket as well as to the horses hind, front legs and mane. There is a small area of vertical retouching measuring approx. 3 cm. apparent in the horses back most hoof, but that apart all other retouching appears to be purely cosmetic. Elsewhere there are scattered retouchings to the hounds in the lower right, most notably to the down facing dog. Overall though the painting appears to be in good condition. Offered in an ornate unpainted carved wood frame in good overall condition.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

This particularly fine painting of a mounted huntsman with his hounds is an exceptionally beautiful work by the artist. Somewhat unusually for Wootton the subject of the painting is not one of his aristocratic or influential patrons, but rather it is an intimate depiction of an unknown huntsman. The sitter is mounted on a magnificent grey hunter, which dominates much of the focus of the painting. His hunting horn is slung from his shoulder and he looks down fondly at the hounds at his horse's feet. Beyond, a classically inspired landscape, in the manner of Claude Lorraine and Gaspar Dughet, frames the composition and underpins the painting with the stoic ideals found in the work of these seventeenth century antecedents, brilliantly adapted by Wootton for the demands of the Augustan age.

In doing this Wootton brings together the two elements of his work for which he became famous in his own time, and is justly remembered for to this day; his innovative panting of animals, particularly horses and hounds, which was responsible for elevating the genre in academic circles and creating a new, distinctly English art form, and his adaptation of the classical pastoral form, in the context of sporting art and applied to the English countryside. It is a tour de force of mid-eighteenth century sporting art, and in its composition, subject matter and size is comparable to the large scale series of pictures Wootton executed for the 3^rd Duke of Marlborough's grand decorative cycle at Althrop, as well as those at Longleat and Badminton. 

Wootton was rightly esteemed the finest animal painter of his generation in Britain, and enjoyed a network of patronage that seems to have been unaffected by family or party loyalties. His Royal benefactors included George II and his estranged son, Frederick, Prince of Wales, whilst Sir Robert Walpole, who commissioned him for paintings to decorate the walls of Houghton Hall and Downing Street, was as happy to patronise the artist as were members of the Opposition, whilst Walpole's son, Horace, not usually known for agreeing with his father on such matters, thought his work of 'very capital manner', admiring the way 'he both drew and coloured with consummate skill, fire and truth'.¹ The younger Walpole was even moved to comment that Wootton's landscapes 'approached towards Gaspar Poussin and sometimes imitated happily the glow of Claude Lorrain'. This remarkable reputation was attested to by George Vertue, who noted that the artist 'was in great vogue & favour with many persons of y^e greatest quality'.² Included among Wootton's most notable patrons were the Dukes of Beaufort, Devonshire, Newcastle and Bedford, as well as the Dukes of Bolton, Rutland, Richmond and Leeds, the munificent Edward Harley, 2^nd Duke of Oxford, who commissioned numerous pictures for Wimpole Hall, and the influential banker, Henry Hoare, at Stourhead.

1. H. Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting in England, vol. IV, London 1762-1771, pp. 119-120.
2. G. Vertue, 'Notebooks, Volume III', Walpole Society, vol. XXII, Oxford 1934, p. 34.