John Wootton was an English painter of sporting subjects, battle scenes and landscapes, and illustrator.

Life

Born in Snitterfield

Snitterfield

Snitterfield is a village and civil parish in the Stratford on Avon district of Warwickshire, England, less than a mile to the north of the A46 road, 4 ½ miles from Stratford upon Avon, 6 ½ miles from Warwick and from Coventry.-History:...

, Warwickshire

Warwickshire

Warwickshire is a landlocked non-metropolitan county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, although the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare...

 (near Stratford-upon-Avon

Stratford-upon-Avon

Stratford-upon-Avon is a market town and civil parish in south Warwickshire, England. It lies on the River Avon, south east of Birmingham and south west of Warwick. It is the largest and most populous town of the District of Stratford-on-Avon, which uses the term "on" to indicate that it covers...

), he is best remembered as a pioneer in the painting of sporting subjects – together with Peter Tillemans

Peter Tillemans

Peter Tillemans was a Flemish painter, best known for his works on sporting and topographical subjects. Alongside John Wootton and James Seymour, he was one of the founders of the English school of sporting painting....

 and James Seymour

James Seymour

James Seymour was an English painter, widely recognized for his equestrian art.Seymour was born in London. His father was an amateur artist and art dealer, whose other business dealings afforded young Seymour the leisure time to study art on his own, either his father's or the art at the...

 – and was considered the finest practitioner of the genre in his day. As such, his paintings were very fashionable and were sought after by those among the highest strata of the British society. These included figures such as George II of England, Frederick, Prince of Wales

Frederick, Prince of Wales

Frederick, Prince of Wales was a member of the House of Hanover and therefore of the Hanoverian and later British Royal Family, the eldest son of George II and father of George III, as well as the great-grandfather of Queen Victoria...

, and the Duke of Marlborough

John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough

John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, Prince of Mindelheim, KG, PC , was an English soldier and statesman whose career spanned the reigns of five monarchs through the late 17th and early 18th centuries...

.

He was active from about 1714 to his death in 1764/5, based in the capital of English horse racing

Horse racing

Horse racing is an equestrian sport that has a long history. Archaeological records indicate that horse racing occurred in ancient Babylon, Syria, and Egypt. Both chariot and mounted horse racing were events in the ancient Greek Olympics by 648 BC...

 at Newmarket, and producing large numbers of portraits of horses and also conversation pieces with a hunting

Fox hunting

Fox hunting is an activity involving the tracking, chase, and sometimes killing of a fox, traditionally a red fox, by trained foxhounds or other scent hounds, and a group of followers led by a master of foxhounds, who follow the hounds on foot or on horseback.Fox hunting originated in its current...

 or riding setting. He had begun life as a page to the family of the Dukes of Beaufort, who in the 1720s sent him to Rome, where he acquired a classicising landscape style based on that of Gaspard Dughet

Gaspard Dughet

Gaspard Dughet , also known as Gaspard Poussin, was a French painter born in Rome.A pupil of Nicolas Poussin, Gaspard Dughet was the brother of Poussin's wife...

, which he used in some pure landscape paintings, as well as views of country houses and equine subjects. This introduced an alternative to the various Dutch and Flemish artists who had previously set the prevailing landscape style in Britain, and through intermediary artists such as George Lambert

George Lambert (English painter)

George Lambert was an English landscape artist and theatre scene painter. He has been described as the Father of English Landscape Oil Painting.-Life and work:...

, the first British painter to base a career on landscape subjects, was to greatly influence other British artists such as Gainsborough.

He is now somewhat eclipsed in the field of animal paintings by the later George Stubbs

George Stubbs

George Stubbs was an English painter, best known for his paintings of horses.-Biography:Stubbs was born in Liverpool, the son of a currier and leather merchant. Information on his life up to age thirty-five is sparse, relying almost entirely on notes made by fellow artist Ozias Humphry towards the...

 (1724–1806), who is considered technically superior. John Wootton died in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 on 13 November 1764. Examples of his animal painting can be found in the Tate Gallery

Tate Gallery

The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

The Virginia Museum of Fine arts, or VMFA, is an art museum in Richmond, Virginia, in the United States, which opened in 1936.The museum is owned and operated by the Commonwealth of Virginia, while private donations, endowments, and funds are used for the support of specific programs and all...

, Richmond

Richmond, Virginia

Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...

, the Yale Center for British Art

Yale Center for British Art

The Yale Center for British Art is an art museum in New Haven, Connecticut at Yale University which houses the most comprehensive collection of British Art outside the United Kingdom...

, and in the Elizabethan Great Hall

Great Hall

Great Hall may refer to* Great hall, the main room of a royal palace, nobleman's castle or large manor house* Great Hall of the People, Tiananmen Square, Beijing* Great Hall of the University of Sydney, Australia* Cooper_Union#The_Great_Hall, New York...

 at Longleat

Longleat

Longleat is an English stately home, currently the seat of the Marquesses of Bath, adjacent to the village of Horningsham and near the towns of Warminster in Wiltshire and Frome in Somerset. It is noted for its Elizabethan country house, maze, landscaped parkland and safari park. The house is set...

.

See also

• British art
  British art
  British art could refer to:* Art of the United Kingdom - post 1707* English art* Irish art* Scottish art* Welsh art...
  
  
• English school of painting
• List of British artists

Further reading

• Lee, Sidney. Dictionary of national biography, volume 62) (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1900 ) p. 440.
• Harrington, Peter. British Artists and War: The Face of Battle in Paintings and Prints, 1700-1914 (London: Greenhill, 1993).