Samuel Scott (c.1702-1772) was an English painter who began his career as a marine specialist working closely in the manner of Willem van de Velde the Younger, several of whose drawings he owned, before becoming, in the second half of his career, the leading painter of London and the River Thames of his generation. Born in London, nothing certain is known of his early training. He first built his reputation painting men-of-war and naval engagements in calm seas in the van de Velde tradition, and around 1733 the antiquarian George Vertue counted him among London's most esteemed artists; a portrait of Scott by his friend Thomas Hudson, painted at around this time and now in Tate Britain, records the two men's close relationship, and both later bought neighbouring riverside villas at Twickenham.
Scott's career took a decisive turn following the arrival in London of the Venetian view-painter Canaletto in 1746, whose enormously successful depictions of the Thames and the City prompted Scott, along with several contemporaries, to redirect his own practice towards topographical London subjects. His London views, painted with acute attention to architecture and light and notably free of Canaletto's characteristically permanent blue Venetian skies, proved highly popular in their own right, and pictures such as his view of Old London Bridge, painted shortly before its demolition in 1760, now serve as valuable historical records of a city in the process of transformation. Scott also continued to paint marine and naval subjects throughout his career, including collaborative works with the landscape painter George Lambert, for whom Scott supplied the shipping in a set of views of East India Company settlements. He eventually retired to Bath, where he died in 1772.
The painting by Scott held by John Mitchell Fine Paintings, an English yacht and other shipping becalmed, belongs to the marine tradition in which he first made his name, connecting naturally with the gallery's broader holdings of British and Dutch marine painting, including Willem van de Velde the Younger, whose influence shaped Scott's earliest work so directly.