David Lyon FL. 1758-1774
Provenance
Bonhams, London, 'Old Master Paintings', 10 December 2002, lot 119 (attributed to Thomas Spencer, titled Going to Cover);
Sotheby's, London, 'The Sporting Sale', 6 June 2007, lot 337 (as James Seymour (c.1702-1752), titled Sir William Jolliffe and his Huntsmen following Hounds towards Covert).
David Lyon (fl. 1758-1774) was a sporting artist in the circle of James Seymour (1702-1752) and was possibly one of his pupils. Lyon is listed in Sporting art in eighteenth-century England: a social and political history by Stephen Deuchar (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988) in his list of eighteenth-century sporting painters in England. Lyon is also listed as exhibiting two works at the Free Society of Artists in 1774, when he was residing at a Capt. Scott's, Tottenham Court Road, London.
This work is after a series of hunting paintings with similar compositions by Seymour. These include a painting dated 1746 in the Dick Collection sale by Sotheby’s in 1976, a painting that sold at Christie’s in 2006, one that sold at Bonhams in 2011 dated 1750, another that sold at Christie’s in 2010 dated 1750, and an engraving after Seymour dated 1757 by Pierre Charles Canot and titled Brushing into Cover.