Three Hounds with Sportsman, a Hunt to the Left

landscape

At the left background a hunting scene is visible. Dog portraiture began in France at the court of Louis XV, who commissioned portraits of his favourite hounds hunting scenes of Frans Snyders. In England, where the emphasis in hunting was increasingly being placed upon the performance of individual hounds, which led to intense rivalry among the landed elite, this was reflected in the paintings of John Wootton and Peter Tillemans; the former of whom in particular started to produce portraits of dogs in the mid eighteenth century.

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Three Hounds with Sportsman, a Hunt to the Left

About the Artist

Peter Tillemans

1684 – 1734

English painter of Flemish birth. Trained in the Netherlands, Tillemans and his brother-in-law, Peter Casteels, went to England in 1708 to work for a picture dealer named Turner as copyists of Old Master paintings. He did well copying landscapes and made his own compositions. By 1711 he seems to have established his own painting practice and in that year became a founder-member of the Great Queen Street Academy, where he declared his speciality as 'landskip'. From 1708 until his death he lived and worked in England. Alongside John Wootton and James Seymour, he was one of the founders of the English school of sporting painting.

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