The Compton Family Hunters with a Groom in the Grounds of Minstead House (1799)
by
Thomas Gooch
Gooch (1750 - 1802) was an English painter, primarily of sporting subjects and portraits of horses and dogs. He exhibited a number of works at the Royal Academy, and generally had a favorable critical reception, though very few of his works were engraved in his lifetime, suggesting a limited popularity outside the circles of those he painted for, and Gooch is little known now.
The Compton family was a well-known sporting family in south-central England. "Hunters" are of course horses bred and trained specifically for hunting; the white horse in the painting is a pony belonging to the young boy pictured in this work.
The large black-and-white dog in the center of the painting of course looks nothing like a Newfoundland of today, but compare this dog to some of the others represented in early Newf paintings.
