Jacob Peter Gowy

[3] He collaborated with Peter Paul Rubens and spent time in England where he was active as a portrait painter.

[6] Two of the canvases which Gouwy created after designs by Rubens, one representing The Fall of Icarus and the other Hippomenes and Atalanta, are in the collection of the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

[4][7] Gouwy also painted Thomas Wood, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry (Oxford, Christ Church College), as well as a portrait of an unknown man (c. 1645 to 1650, formerly at Wilton Castle).

Gouwy's painting, signed and dated 1647, is believed to represent the Marquess of Worcester's dappled grey stallion (at Christie's on 22 May 2008, London, lot 250).

John Wootton was in his youth a page to Lady Anne Somerset, daughter of the 1st Duke of Beaufort and wife of Thomas, 2nd Earl of Coventry.

The early exposure to a monumental example of horse painting likely gave Wootton a sense of the possibilities of the field that made him one of the most vigorous and daring of its exponents.

His design representing Noon depicts an outdoor scene with a lady staring melancholically into the distance while a gentleman plays a guitar.