A Lion Hunt
James Northcote, RA (Plymouth 1746 – London 1831)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1819
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
2235 x 2720 mm
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Petworth House and Park, West Sussex (Accredited Museum)
On show at
Petworth House and Park, West Sussex, London and South East, National Trust
NT 486164
Caption
The central group of the composition is adapted in reverse from Rubens painting of the same subject at Dresden, so it must have been copied after an engraving. An earlier version of the subject is listed by S. Gwynn in ‘Memorials of an 18th Century Painter’, (1898) as having being painted in 1811. It may be this picture which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1813. Northcote was a painter of portraits, histories, fancy pictures and animal pictures. His history pictures, many of which were for Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery, were his pride.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, A Lion Hunt by James Northcote, RA (Plymouth 1746 – London 1831), 1819. A lion hunt with a man on a rearing grey horse with a lion on his back and at left, a footman spearing the lion. At right there is another horseman, a black attendant and a lioness and cubs.
Provenance
In the collection of the 3rd Earl of Egremont (1751-1837) by 1835. Thence by descent, until the death in 1952 of the 3rd Lord Leconfield, who had given Petworth to the National Trust in 1947, and whose nephew and heir, John Wyndham, 6th Lord Leconfield and 1st Lord Egremont (1920-72) arranged for the acceptance of the major portion of the collections at Petworth in lieu of death duties (the first ever such arrangement) in 1956 by H.M.Treasury.
Credit line
Petworth, The Egremont Collection (National Trust)
Marks and inscriptions
James Northcote. Pinxit 1819
Makers and roles
James Northcote, RA (Plymouth 1746 – London 1831), artist of original