Item | Waddesdon Manor

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artist or maker

Wootton, John (b.c 1682, d.1764)

Date

1730-1740

dated stylistically

Place of production

London, England, United Kingdom

Medium

oil on canvas

Type of object

paintings

Accession number

842

Portrait of an unidentified racehorse at Newmarket with three attendants at right. The bay horse has three white spots on its back. It stands side on facing right. To the right, stands a groom holding the horse's reins. He wears a blue and gold jacket and a shirt, with tight-fitting breeches and boots. His head is bare. He looks towards a group of riders on the left. To the right of him stands a jockey. He wears a round cap with a brim, a pink close-fitting shirt and pink trousers, and boots. He holds a crop and a saddle. To the left of them, there is a stable boy bent over attending to some blue and white clothes on the ground. On the far right, there is the edge of a thin brick building, with a tiled roof, one of the rubbing down houses at Newmarket.

Behind, there is a view of open countryside with a group of seven horses and riders gathered in the right back-ground, near a post. To the left, in the mid-ground, there are four horses with three riders. A man in a tricorn hat and a man in a jockey's hat ride away with a third horse. In front, a man on a bay horse addresses a man standing before the horse with a dog. The man on the horse wears a tricorn hat and possibly a star-shaped medal on his breast and points to the other men behind him with a crop. The standing man wears a knee-length jacket, blue stockings and cuffs and carries a round hat in his right hand. His back is to the viewer.

Commentary

John Wootton was the most prolific horse painter of his day. The horse shown in this painting is unidentified, but it is probably one that had success at Newmarket in the first half of the 18th century. The open countryside in the background shows Newmarket heath and the building on the right is one of the rubbing down houses at Newmarket.

Wootton, as well as other sporting artists, often used this equestrian pose to show the horse to full advantage. He probably received some instruction from Jan Wyck who painted horses in this pose, sometimes accompanied by their grooms and owners. The men on the right are the jockey and perhaps the trainer. The latter looks to the well-dressed man entering the scene on the left, who is perhaps the horse's owner coming to inspect his investment. Wootton painted a similar picture of a nobleman, possibly Lord Portmore, arriving to inspect racehorses at Newmarket in around 1735 (Yale Center for British Art). Conservation of the Waddesdon painting has shown that there is another horse underneath the top paint layer.

By 1728, Wootton's work was very popular. His patrons included the Prince of Wales, the Dukes of Bedford, Marlborough, Rutland and Richmond, as well as his first major patron, Edward Harley, Earl of Oxford. These aristocrats owned the racehorses pictured by Wootton. In 1741, it was said that Wootton commanded 'the greatest price of any man in England'.

Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild acquired the painting to decorate the Bachelors' Wing, the part of the house reserved for the bedrooms of single gentlemen. This Wing was decorated with many sporting pictures, suiting its intended guests.

Phillippa Plock, 2012

Physical description

Dimensions (mm) / weight (mg)

1035 x 1262
1000 x 1204 - sight

Signature & date

signed, lower left: J. Wootton

History

Provenance

Acquired by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild (b.1839, d.1898); inherited by his sister Alice de Rothschild (b.1847, d.1922); inherited by her great-nephew James de Rothschild (b.1878, d.1957); given to Waddesdon (National Trust) by the Treasury Solicitor in lieu of taxes on the Estate of Mr James de Rothschild in 1963.

Collection

Waddesdon (National Trust)
Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the National Trust for display at Waddesdon Manor, 1963

Bibliography

Ellis Waterhouse, Anthony Blunt; Paintings: The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor; Fribourg; Office du Livre, The National Trust; 1967; pp. 120-121, cat. no. 48, ill.

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