The Shooting Party

Frederick, Prince of Wales, is shown seated, wearing hunting livery with the ribbon and star of the Order of the Garter. Two loaders can be seen behind him at the right edge of the composition, while John Spencer (1708-46) stands on the left holding a partridge behind his back. He was the father of the 1st Earl Spencer and the favourite grandson of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, whom he succeeded as Ranger of Windsor Great Park in 1744. Horace Walpole remarked on Spencers early death in a letter of 20 June 1746 to Sir Horace Mann: Jack Spencer, old Marlborough's grandson and heir, is just dead, at the age of six or seven and thirty, and in possession of near £30,000 a year, merely because he would not be abridged of those miserable blessings of an English subject, brandy, small-beer, and tobacco.' The Duke of Queensberry (1698-1778) quarrelled with George II and therefore, given the nature of Hanoverian politics, found favour with the king's son Frederick, Prince of Wales, becoming Gentleman of the Bedchamber (1733-51) and Captain-General of the Royal Company of Archers (1758-78). Later he served George III as Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland. He was the patron of the dramatist John Gay.

Wootton was the foremost sporting artist, landscape and battle painter of early Georgian England. He was patronised not only by members of the Royal Family, but also by leading aristocratic families such as the Dukes of Beaufort, Devonshire, Newcastle and Bedford. Frederick, Prince of Wales, commissioned a number of hunting scenes from Wootton, and two battle scenes [The Siege of Lille and The Siege of Tournay] commemorating the Duke of Marlborough's campaigns during the War of the Spanish Succession (1689-1713); these were hung prominently in Leicester House. In addition, he acquired three important landscapes of the grounds of Park Place near Henley-on-Thames, an estate purchased by the Prince of Wales around 1738. Trained by the Dutch artist Jan Wyck, Wootton became an adroit painter of horses and dogs, but the landscapes in which he set his sporting scenes were influenced by Poussin, Gaspard Dughet and Claude. The style of Claude is apparent in The Shooting Party, especially in the treatment of the sky and the trees.

The frame for the painting was made by Paul Petit (active about 1740-45) two years after it was delivered by the artist. The frame is handsomely decorated with hunting trophies and equipment. At the top a lion's head supports the Prince of Wales's coronet and feathers, while below on the base rail a hawk stands astride a dead bird. A dead snipe and duck lie on the upper cornice, while hounds' heads emerge from the scrolls at the comers.