ADAM'S Country House Collections Day II - 14th October 2025

59 Country House Collections| 13 th - 14 th October 2025 James Seymour, one of the leading sporting painters of the eighteenth century, was born in London, the son of James Seymour senior (1658–1739), a banker, goldsmith, and diamond merchant who supplied silver plate for racing trophies. Seymour’s father was also an amateur artist and a member of the Virtuosi Club of St Luke, whose members included John Wootton and Peter Tille- mans. Encouraged from childhood to draw, George Vertue noted that “from his infancy he had a genius to drawings of Horses”, Seymour studied the prints and paintings in his father’s collection, copying Old Masters and absorbing the latest fashions in sport- ing art. Though largely self-taught, he gained entry to the London art world through his father’s connections, and soon developed a reputation at Newmarket, the centre of English racing. Seymour attracted many patrons from among the nobility and gentry, and his meticulous draughtsmanship, allied to an intimate knowledge of horses and the turf, secured him a place among the most accomplished sporting artists of the Georgian period. The present portrait depicts Sir Edward O’Brien, 2nd Baronet of Dromoland (1705–1765), dressed in contemporary hunting cos- tume. Born in England, O’Brien was the eldest surviving son of Lucius O’Brien (1675–1717) and Catherine Keightley, and grandson of Sir Donough O’Brien, 1st Baronet, from whom he inherited the title. His maternal grandmother, Lady Frances Keightley (née Hyde), was the sister of Anne Hyde, Duchess of York, making him a kinsman of Queens Mary II and Anne. Educated in Ireland and later at Oxford, O’Brien entered the Irish House of Commons in 1727, representing County Clare until his death nearly four decades later. O’Brien was renowned for his extravagance and passion for horse racing, traits that ultimately undermined the fortune so carefully amassed by his grandfather. His heavy gambling and reckless management of his estates prevented him from being chosen as heir to the vast Thomond estates, which might otherwise have transformed the prospects of the Dromoland branch of the O’Briens. In 1726 he married Mary Hickman, with whom he had eight children. Seymour’s portrait of O’Brien thus captures not only a distinguished figure of the Irish political and landed elite but also a man whose life epitomised the pleasures and perils of eighteenth-century sporting culture.