A Hunting Party after a Hare, with an extensive river landscape beyond

James Seymour's father, also called James (1658-1739), was not only a goldsmith, banker and diamond merchant at the sign of the 'Flower de Luce' in Fleet Street, but an amateur artist who seems to have been involved in picture dealing. A friend of many of the leading artists of the day, he was also a member of the Virtuosi Club of St. Luke of which his friends, John Wootton and Peter Tillemans, were fellow members, and was later a founder-member of the Academy of St. Luke. It is perhaps not surprising that Seymour should have chosen the career of an artist. He seems to have been largely self-taught, studying pictures and prints in his father's collection and also copying old masters: studies of horses heads by him after Tempesta and Van Dyck are in the collection of the British Museum. Vertue mentions that 'from his infancy' he 'had a genius to drawing of Horses'. The extent to which he came into contact with and was influenced by Wootton and Tillemans is however difficult to gauge. His earliest known picture of Old Fox held by a Groom, signed and dated 1721, which he painted for John, 3rd Duke of Rutland, already shows an artist of mature ability and confidence (now in the Paul Mellon Collection, see J. Egerton, The Paul Mellon Collection: British Sporting and Animal Paintings, 1655-1867, London, 1978, p.40, no.41). Seymour worked largely at Newmarket and attracted many patrons. His connections with the racing world appear to have been partly inherited from his father, who supplied plate for trophies to race meetings at Epsom and Guildford. He seems however to have developed a strong interest of his own in racing and may have owned his own horses. Vertue records that he 'run through some thousands' on 'racing, gaming' and 'women', which may have been partly responsible for his father's bankruptcy in 1737. Seymour's work is more formalised than that of Wootton and Tillemans. The precision with which the horses in this picture are depicted is characteristic of his highly finished technique.