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, which often look leggy and have shorter coats. Given the size and coloration of this dog, it's possible this could be an early Newf.
