Lord Portmore's 'Snap', a saddled chestnut hunter held by a groom, with a setter in a landscape

Details

James Seymour (1702-1752)
Lord Portmore's 'Snap', a saddled chestnut hunter held by a groom, with a setter in a landscape
signed and dated 'J. Seymour/1743/Snap' (lower left)
oil on canvas
41 x 48 in. (104.1 x 122 cm.)
Painted in 1743.

Provenance

Major Guy Paget, Wheeler House, Husbands Bosworth, by 1928.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 23 June 1972, lot 26 (10,000 gns. to Ackerman).
R.A. McCalpine.
with Roy Miles Fine Painting, London, where acquired for the present collection.

Exhibited

Leicester, Leicester Museum and Art Gallery, Sport in the Midlands: An Exhibition of Sporting Paintings Drawings and Prints, 12 December 1928 - 13 January 1929, number untraced.
London, Allendale House, Loan Exhibition of Sporting Pictures in Aid of the London Foot Hospital, February 1931, unnumbered.
Preston, Harris Museum and Art Gallery, British Sporting Paintings Exhibition, 4 - 30 October 1943, number untraced, lent by Major Guy Paget.

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Lot Essay

Charles ‘Beau’ Colyear, 2^nd Earl of Portmore, was a Whig politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1726 and 1730. In 1739 he served as a founding Governor of the Foundling Hospital, a charity dedicated to the salvation of abandoned children. Master of Horse to King George II and a leading racehorse owner, he was a key patron of Seymour, commissioning at least eight works from the artist. The inscription ‘Snap’, below the artist’s signature and date, may have been added by a slightly later hand.

We are grateful to Richard Wills for his assistance in cataloguing this picture.

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