This painting and its companion in the following lot were presumably painted as overdoors for old Mere Hall. Until comparatively recently the father of this family of artists living in Knutsford was thought to be Franicis Stringer, and he is recorded as such in E.K. Waterhouse's Dictionary of Eighteenth Artists. However, in the almost contemporary inventories at Dunham Massey there is a bill dated 26 October 1778 for two paintings of a Great Dane named 'Turpin' made out to a 'Mr Thomas Stringer'. He also appears as the artist of two paintings in the Egerton collection in the Descriptive Catalogue of the Pictures at Oulton Park, 1864. Consequently the correct Christian name for him must be Thomas, the previous confusion presumbly stemming from the misreading of initials in the signature on other works

A group portrait of three members of the Shrewsbury Hunt in the Mellon collections shows several similarities in composition to the present picture (see J. Egerton, The Paul Mellon Collection: British Sporting and Animal Paintings 1655-1867, 1978, pp.124-5, no.121, ol.46, where attributed to Francis Sartorius).