21st Century Paintings March 2007

Gorry Gallery
16. William H. Bartlett (Detail)
FRONT COVER: William H. Bartlett 1858-1932
Catalogue Number 16. (Detail)
© GORRY GALLERY LTD.
Gorry Gallery
requests the pleasure of your company at the private view of
An Exhibition of
18th - 21st Century Paintings
on Wednesday, 14th March, 2007
Wine 6 o’clock
This exhibition can be viewed prior to the opening by appointment and at
www.gorrygallery.ie
Kindly note that all paintings in this exhibition are for sale from 6.00 p.m.
14th March – 31st March 2007
16. WILLIAM HENRY BARTLETT, 1858-1932
‘His Last Work’
Oil on canvas 115.5 x 153.5
Signed and dated 1885
Exhibited, Royal Academy, 1885 (no 1160)
Provenance: William Wallace Spence, Baltimore City
Gifted to the Presbyterian House, Towson, Maryland by Mrs Bartow Van Ness and Mrs Frederick Barron granddaughters of
William Wallace Spence
Bears label of Dicksee and Dicksee, 1 Pall Mall Place, London and a label inscribed with the title in the artist’s hand, giving his address
as Park Lodge, Church Street, Chelsea
In its original carved and gilded exhibition frame, possibly designed by the artist
William Henry Bartlett is emerging as one of the most interesting and accomplished artists to have worked in Ireland in the nineteenth
century. Although a visitor, he engaged directly with Irish subject matter both in paint and in print. He is known today for his remarkably
innovative views of daily life in the West, which form an important link between the essentially Victorian, and often sentimental, work
of other visiting artists such as Howard Helmick and the figurative work of Charles Lamb and Paul Henry in the early decades of the
twentieth century. Much still remains to be learnt of Bartlett’s life and, while his Connemara views are much appreciated and collected, his
major exhibition pieces in other genres are little known, no doubt because of their great rarity. The present work, recently rediscovered, has
claim to be Barlett’s early masterpiece and reveals his debt to the French tradition in which he trained.
Bartlett studied under Gérôme at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris in the mid 1870s, where he was a fellow pupil of Aloysius O’Kelly.
He also enrolled at the Académie Julian under Fleury and Bougereau. His Irish work of the later 1870s and 1880s such as On the Beach
Connemara, and Off to the Fair, Connemara (both private collections), clearly recall the plein-air naturalism of Jules Bastien-Lepage,
however several paintings, including His Last Work, sit more squarely within the academic tradition in which he studied. Bartlett attained
compositional brilliance and technical fluency in his years in Paris before returning to London in 1880. He continued his links with France
and was awarded a silver medal at the Paris exhibition of 1889.
Two paintings in particular take as their inspiration Bartlett’s years in France, His Last Work and the related The Neighbours (private
collection). The latter picture, dated 1881, clearly recalls his student days in Paris and shows two young artists in their studio, distracted
from their discussion of art by the appearance of a pretty neighbour at the opposite window. His Last Work, by contrast, shows the studio of
a prosperous sculptor. The mid and late nineteenth century saw a whole genre emerge, particularly in France, of paintings of artists’ studio.
Typically, the artist is shown at work, often with a model posing or resting. This tradition is exemplified by, for example, Edouard Dantan’s
A Corner of the Studio (1880, Musée des Art Decoratifs, Paris) in which a sculptor is shown carving a relief of the Triumph of Silenus, or
by Jean-François Raffaëlli’s, At the Foundry (1886, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon). Bartlett introduces a complex and emotionally powerful
variation on the subject by showing visitors to a studio admiring the final work of a recently deceased sculptor.
There has long been a fascination with the last works of artists, and Bartlett plays with this theme in the picture and explicitly in its title.
Unlike the pietàs with which Titian and Michelangelo struggled in their last years, charged with emotional and religious intensity, and
experimenting with an unfinished aesthetic to convey the imperfectability of human life, there is a neat irony in the highly finished, and
wholly secular, sculpture being unveiled to the company. The three figures to the left presumably include family members or friends of the
artist; the young girl to the right, is no doubt his daughter. She looks intently as her young mother, dressed in mourning black, poignantly
encircles the sculpture with a wreath. There is a telling juxtaposition between the black of the widow’s weeds and the glistening white
of the marble and the clear suggestion that she was the model for the work. In an inversion of the Pygmalion myth, popular among
contemporary artists such as Burne-Jones, instead of the sculpture being brought to life by the artist’s touch, his death leaves his sculpture
mute, his widow bereft. This innovative take on sculptor, studio, sculpture and model prefigures important works by his master Jean-Léon
Gérôme, notably the French artist’s The End of the Séance (1887, whereabouts, unknown) and perhaps even more so The Artist and his
Model (1895, Haggin Museum, Stockton, California). Of course the youthful appearance of both mother and daughter adds greatly to the
pathos of the scene. It contrasts absolutely with earlier French depictions of artists’ studios, for example a work by Jean-Baptise Lallemand
(Musée des Beaux-Art de Dijon) where an artist is shown again in his studio sketching while his young wife and daughter read and draw
contentedly. The absence of the artist in the very private place of his working environment (from which perhaps others were kept away lest
they be a distraction) is the haunting hole at the centre of the picture’s conceit. This is emphasized by the great stillness to the composition,
the figures to the left join us as spectators to the central scene of loss, simply but very effectively conveyed by the facial expressions of
mother and daughter. At the same time the slightly exaggerated perspective, emphasized by the receding lines of the floor boards (a trick
Bartlett also employs in The Neighbours), forces the attention onto the artist’s last work and his bereaved family. It is a powerful work in
conception, cleverly composed and unusually assured for so young an artist.
The contents of the studio reflect the sculptor’s inspiration, from the classical past, the Renaissance and also contemporary art. On the left
is a cast of a typical quattrocento Florentine Madonna and Child relief, in the manner of Desiderio da Settignano or Antonio Rosselino.
(Illustrated inside front cover) On the table at the back of the room sits a version of the famous bust of Clytie. Formerly in the celebrated
collection of marbles formed by Charles Townley, it was one of the most frequently copied of all classical sculptures (Goethe alone
owned two versions). Showing more recent inspiration, directly above the widow’s head is a reproduction of Ingres’ famous La Source
(Musée d’Orsay, Paris) painted some thirty years earlier, the position of its arm echoing that in the sculpture on display. This, as well as
the costumes of the figures, particularly that of the gentleman to the left, seem to localise the scene firmly as a Parisian atelier. Prints,
medallions, busts and fragments of statuary complete the accoutrements of the studio, which itself is sparse furnished, only a few rugs, a
stove and kettle and some palm fronds soften the austerity of the space. The large window, an essential element of any artist’s studio, is half
covered, the bright southern light it had provided, needed no longer.
The picture is boldly, rather proudly, signed and dated 1885, the year that it was exhibited by Bartlett at the Royal Academy. Clearly it
was a work with which he was pleased, as it was the only picture he exhibited in the Academy that year. Its history immediately after its
completion is uncertain; however, it soon found its way to America and an early reproduction of it in the files of the Witt Library, London,
indicates it was donated to the collection of Presbyterian House, Towson, Maryland.
In addition to paintings such as those by Gérôme noted above, the theme of the artist’s studio was addressed by several Irish artists,
Aloysius O’Kelly, produced a work rather similar to Bartlett’s The Neighbours in his self portrait with a friend in his Parisian studio
(private collection). However, perhaps the closest comparison is with Richard Thomas Moynan’s The Artist in his Studio in Dublin
(National Gallery of Ireland), which is dated 1887 just two year’s after His Last Work and it is tempting to see a connection between these
related pictures; Moynan would very likely have seen the latter in the Royal Academy exhibition. Like Moynan, Bartlett was a slow worker
and pictures of this scale and complexity are extremely rare in his oeuvre. In light of the current awakening appreciation of nineteenthcentury genre painting, as exemplified by artists such as Moynan, the rediscovery of this major painting by one of the most gifted artist to
have worked in Ireland is greatly to be welcomed.
48. Michael Angelo Hayes R.H.A. 1820-1877
‘A fashionable equestrian group at the Palace Street gate of Dublin Castle; c. 1850.’
Watercolour heightened with white on paper laid down on linen, 74 x 109.5.
This large painting of an unknown group at the Palace Street gate of Dublin Castle is both unusual and interesting. The young riders may
represent a brother and sister with perhaps their father looking on (in the frock coat with riding crop). It could be that the father (who
possibly commissioned the painting) had some connection with Dublin Castle, in administration, revenue or the military. But why are they
posing in front of this gate, in the public Street, outside the lower Castle yard? Perhaps the patron was involved with the riding school,
some of whose buildings can be seen in the background beyond the archway and to the left above the wall. This house was said to be the
dwelling of the notorious Major Sirr who arrested Robert Emmet in 1803.
The impressive arched gateway itself, constructed in granite with two pedestrian gates and one carriageway is built of heavily rusticated
stone and has a number of similarities with the Ship Street gate (at the rear of Dublin Castle). Both gates are likely to date from the 1780’s,
at which time the Wide Streets Commissioners re-aligned and widened Palace Street and carried out some work in Ship Street. The style
of the gate with its substantial pediment and heavy keystones is typical of the mid to late 18th century and is evocative of the militaristic,
triumphant arches of ancient Rome. Apart from the gate, the only other building in the picture which still stands is the brick-built Treasury
building seen on the right behind the Sentry. This is now used by the offices of the Controller and Auditor General. The yard behind the
Sentry is still known as the Piquet yard – (the place where soldiers mounted the picket on the gate). Though this gate remains open to the
public today, it will be noted that an official black and white sign on the gate then stated “No Thoroughfare”. The castle was an important
military barracks and at times a Royal residence, and was not normally open or accessible to the general public.
On the right a fruit seller squats on the pavement in Palace Street, outside what was the Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers Society offices from
about 1850 to 1992. Opposite, to the left is Dame Lane, with its corner mounted oil lamp, and a pile of flagstone stacked against a house
– the predecessor of the present A.I.B. bank building – a wonderful evocation of a Venetian palace by architects Deane & Woodward.
The former Dublin Castle riding school and other Georgian buildings seen in the background, were demolished in the 1960’s and were
replaced with a Revenue office block – now known as the stamping building.
Peter Pearson
We are grateful to Glen Thompson for giving us the following
The officer in the centre in conversation with the lady on horseback, appears in undress wearing a dark blue frock coat with black mohair
braiding. His trousers, correctly called overalls have a wide scarlet stripe at each side which would suggest that he belonged to the Royal
Artillery. His uniform is in keeping with the 1850s.
To the extreme right of the painting is a dismounted sentry of the 13th Light Dragoons wearing a blue hussar-style uniform. During this
period it was common practice to dress Light Dragoon regiments as hussars. It was not until 1861 that the regiment was renamed the 13th
Hussars, a title they held until 1920. He wears the hanging jacket or pelisse from his left shoulder. This regiment was distinguished by buffcoloured facings which can be clearly seen on his overalls.
The gentleman on the left in civilian clothes with his right arm in a sling may be an officer who was wounded in the wars.
1. NATHANIEL HONE the elder, R.A. 1718-84
‘Self-portrait of Nathaniel Hone RA (1718-84) 1750’
Painted with metallic oxides on enamel on metal, 4.1 x 3.4
Set in the lid of a tortoise-shell and gold bonbonnière of c.1780 which is marked with the initials JF . 6.5 tondo, 2.7 deep
Illustrated actual size
Signed: NH (monogram)
Dated: 1750
Provenance: By descent in the Hone family,
Private collection in France.
Nathaniel Hone was born in Dublin and spent most of his career in London. He occupies a significant place in the history of Irish and
English miniature portrait painting during the mid-eighteenth century. After Zincke’s decline, during the early 1740s, Hone succeeded
him as the foremost enamel miniaturist of his day. Hone’s contribution to the technical development of miniature painting on enamel and
in watercolour on ivory and his virtuosity as a miniaturist has not been given sufficient attention in accounts of his life and work. Hone
is known as an oil painter, founder member of the Royal Academy and for his dispute with Sir Joshua Reynolds. His direct naturalistic
approach to painting miniature portraits owed much to Hogarth and Hudson’s work and predicts his later development as an oil painter
and portraitist.
In this hitherto unrecorded self-portrait Hone portrays himself as a fashionable young man. He is depicted with long hair in masquerade
costume which was known as Vandyke dress. Although painted in 1750, Hone wears a dark blue silk doublet which is slashed to reveal
a contrasting red silk lining and lace-trimmed linen falling collar with tasselled tie strings. This fanciful costume was inspired by the
early seventeenth century portraiture of Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641) which was a popular form of fancy dress for portraiture and for
attending masquerade balls in the mid-eighteenth century. Hone did numerous enamel portraits in Vandyke dress and a comparable
portrait of a woman in a matching costume, also dated 1750, is in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Hone liked
theatrical dress and painted many portraits in fancy or exotic costume such as his Rembrandtesque self-portrait painted in 1749 in the
Clarke Collection (Scottish National Portrait Gallery).
Miniature portraits painted on enamel, such as this one, were intimate, private images that recorded an accurate likeness of the sitter.
They were also decorative ornamental objects, part of fashionable dress and personal adornment. Enamels were either worn as jewellery,
in lockets or brooches, or set into gold boxes such as snuff boxes, or as in this case, the portrait is set into a gold-mounted tortoise-shell
bonbonnière. During the eighteenth century a bonbonnière was a highly desirable luxury object. These expensive accessories were used to
contain sweets, or other types of confectionary, such as sweetmeats or cachous pills which were used by smokers to sweeten their breath.
This bonbonnière was made about thirty years after the portrait was painted. The tortoise-shell is inlaid with gold holly leaves (sometimes
associated with erotic symbolism) and the mounts are adorned with daisies and foliage in a style associated with the reign of Louis XVI
(1774-92). The box is not hallmarked with English or French marks and it was probably made in Geneva, c.1780, by an unrecorded maker
with the initials J. F.
A full account of Hone’s enamel self-portrait is given in the current Spring issue of the Irish Arts Review (vol. 24, no.1).
Dr Paul Caffrey
See generally: Anthony Pasquin, Memoirs of the Royal Academicians being an attempt to improve the national taste, London 1796, pp. 9-10; Edward Edwards, Anecdotes of Painters, London 1808,
pp. 99-103; Walter G. Strickland, A Dictionary of Irish Artists, London 1913, vol. I, pp. 515-23; Anne Crookshank and The Knight of Glin, Irish Portraits 1660-1860, London 1969, pp. 47-9 and
78.
Basil Long, British Miniaturists, London 1929, pp. 219-20; Paul Caffrey, John Comerford and the Portrait Miniature in Ireland c.1620-1850, Kilkenny, 1999, p. 22; Paul Caffrey, Treasures to Hold
Irish and English Miniature 1650-1850 from the National Gallery of Ireland Collection, Dublin, 2000, pp. 58-61.
29. NATHANIEL HONE the elder, R.A. (1718-84)
‘The Spartan Boy – A Portrait of John Camillus Hone (1759-1836) c.1775’
Oil on canvas 76.2 x 63.5
Provenance: private collection, England.
This is a version, by Nathaniel Hone, of his famous painting The Spartan Boy which is a portrait of his young son, John Camillus Hone.
Hone exhibited The Spartan Boy at the Royal Academy, London, in 1775 (catalogue no.157). The painting was an immediate success as the
sentiments expressed in the portrait were greatly admired. To satisfy the demand for images of the picture it was engraved, shortly after it
was exhibited, by William Humphrey, James Newton and J.R. Smith, in London.
There are several differences between the engravings of The Spartan Boy and the known versions of this painting which have been attributed
to Nathaniel Hone. There are a number of details in this painting which do not appear in the engravings or in the other versions. To the right of
the boy there is a loosely painted distant view of the Spartan countryside and in the lower right hand corner there may be seen a suggestion
of trees and a temple front or the portico of a primitive Spartan rustic hut. These details suggest that this may be the original first version
painted by Nathaniel Hone and that the other known examples were painted from the engravings which were executed in 1775. The canvas
of this painting is larger (measuring 76.2 x 63.5) than the other extant versions which measure 68.6 x 45.7 and 66 x 50.8 respectively.
The story of the Spartan boy which inspired this work refers to the initiation process of Spartan youths. Spartan children were very strictly
brought up, treated equally and were instilled with great respect for their elders. All Spartans wore the same clothes regardless of rank.
Youths wore a tunic covered with a thin cloak which may be seen in the present work. The Spartans were great warriors and trained for war
every day. They employed helotes or slaves to work in the fields while they exercised. A significant part of the initiation process was to kill a
slave and to steal. It was regarded as a great disgrace to be caught. In Spartan culture silence and modesty were highly commended. Hone
illustrates the moment when the boy having stolen a fox cub conceals it in his cloak rather than be discovered. The fox bites the boy and
wounds him mortally. The boy suffers in silence rather than undergo the disgrace of being discovered. The Spartan boy was emblematic of
the endurance and strength of the Spartans.
This portrait is part of a series of portraits Hone painted of his children and grandchildren. In this group of pictures painted during the
1760s and 1770s the sitters are set against an uncluttered background which focuses the eye on the sitter as Hone did in his earlier portraits
in miniature. In these oil portraits all of the children have slightly glazed expressions, fresh complexions and red lips. The eyes are strongly
painted with highlights and the attention to minute details derives from Hone’s background as an enamellist. Hone captures the innocent
charm of the children and emphasises this by introducing a favourite device such as a dog, rabbit, or as in this example, a fox cub. One
of Nathaniel Hone’s greatest contributions to art in the eighteenth century was his invention of this new type of picture during the 1760s
which was a combination of the `fancy picture’ with the portrait. This is exemplified in his numerous portraits of his children and
grandchildren. His Portrait of a Boy Sketching (National Gallery of Ireland) and David the Shepherd Boy (exhibited R.A. 1771) are portraits of
his son Horace Hone. A Piping Boy (National Gallery of Ireland), A Boy Deliberating on his Drawing (c.1766) (Ulster Museum, to be exhibited
in Treasures from the North: Irish Masterpieces from the Ulster Museum at the National Gallery of Ireland from 14 March-16 September 2007) and
The Spartan Boy are portraits of John Camillus Hone.
These `fancy pictures’ of Hone’s children and grandchildren were re-workings of the old master classical tradition of depicting pastoral
imagery and allegorical figures from antiquity. The fact that they are also portraits, full of character and conveying the individuality of the
sitters, gives great freshness to the work. Hone also painted similar portraits of his daughters and grand-daughters. His elder daughter
Lydia Hone (1760-1775) was the subject of a portrait in which she holds a white rabbit which she saved from a fox (engraved 1771). Hone
did portraits of his grand-daughter Eleanor or Mary Metcalfe (b.1767/8) in Miss Metcalfe with a Pomeranian Dog (engraved 1772) and Portrait
of a Girl with a Pomeranian Dog (1776) (exhibited at The Gorry Gallery in 2003). Hone’s direct approach to painting this group of portraits of
children anticipates the work of the next generation of portraitists.
John Camillus Hone became a miniaturist (an example of his work is in the NGI). Like his brother Horace Hone, he was taught painting by
his father. He exhibited his work at the Royal Academy, London and the Free Society of Arts. In about 1780 he went to India where he lived
for about ten years. He taught drawing in Calcutta in 1785 before returning to settle in Dublin. He was appointed to the post of engraver of
dies at the Stamp Office. In the Hone family tradition he married his cousin Abigail Hone, the daughter of Joseph Hone of York Street (his
father’s brother) and widow of Reverend John Conolly of York Street. John Camillus Hone died at his house 14 Summerhill, Dublin in 1836.
Dr Paul Caffrey
Martin Postle, Angels and Urchins The Fancy Picture in 18th Century British Art, London, 1998, p. 64.
Adrian Le Harivel, Nathaniel Hone the Elder 1718-1784, Dublin, 1992, pp. 28-30.
Nicola Figgis and Brendan Rooney, Irish Paintings in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 2001, vol. I, pp. 222-6.
2. NATHANIEL HONE the elder, R.A. (1718-84)
‘Portrait of John Gray of Dalmarnock and Carntyne (b.1715) 1749’
Painted on enamel on copper 4.5 x 3.9
Signed: NH (monogram)
Dated: 1749
Provenance: private collection in Germany.
Illustrated actual size
John Gray came from a distinguished Scottish family who lived at Dalmarnock House, on the right bank
of the Clyde at Bridgeton, near Glasgow. The lands at Dalmarnock belonged to the Gray and Woddrop
families. The Grays of Dalmarnock and Carntyne held extensive lands around Glasgow.
Hone’s enamel technique is exemplified in this portrait. Enamel miniatures were painted with metallic
oxides on an enamel surface over a copper or gold base and then fired in a kiln. Despite the technical
difficulties of painting on enamel this portrait is crisply executed. Hone uses minute dotted stipple in
painting the shaded areas of the face and pinkish stipple in the shading of the sitter’s cheeks.
Dr Paul Caffrey
14. HORACE HONE A.R.A. (1754-1825)
‘Portrait of James Currie MD FRS, Liverpool physician and man of letters (1756-1805) 1806,’
Watercolour on card 11 x 9
Signed and dated: 1806
Engraved by R.H. Cromek in 1807.
Inscribed on the reverse: Liverpool – painted by H Hone ARA/ miniature painter to HRH The Prince of Wales 1806/…
Literature: W.J. Strickland A Dictionary of Irish Artists, Dublin 1913, vol. I, p. 510;
P. Caffrey Treasures to Hold Irish and English Miniatures 1650-1850 from the National Gallery of Ireland Collection, Dublin,
2000, pp.100-101 & 174.
Horace Hone was the second son Nathaniel Hone RA (1718-84). Horace was taught miniature painting in watercolour on ivory and on
enamel by his father. In 1770 Horace Hone attended the Royal Academy Schools in London, he exhibited at the RA from 1772-1822 and was
elected ARA in 1779. Horace Hone settled in Dorset Street, Dublin in 1782 and worked almost exclusively in Ireland until 1804. Hone had
been brought to Ireland by Lady Temple when her husband was viceroy. Lady Temple was Baroness Nugent of Carlanstown in her own
right in the peerage of Ireland and through her social connections in Ireland and with the backing of the vice-regal court she ensured that
Hone received ample patronage. Hone was so successful that he was appointed Miniature Painter to the Prince of Wales in 1795. He had
an extensive practice which was badly affected by the Act of Union when many of his fashionable patrons moved to London. He spent 1804
in Bath. For some time afterwards he lived in London, in the house of his patron, Richard, 7th Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion (founder
of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), where he re-established himself as a miniaturist. Hone had long suffered from mental illness and his
decline is recorded in The Diary of Joseph Farington. He died in London and is buried in the grounds of St George’s Chapel, Bayswater Road.
Horace Hone’s portrait of Dr Currie, posed in a fur-lined coat, is similar in composition and detail to his portrait of James Gandon (National
Gallery of Ireland). Painted in 1806 the portrait of Currie would have been done posthumously. James Currie was born in KirkpatrickFleming, Dumfriesshire and educated in Scotland. In 1771 he went to America where he settled in Virginia. He returned to Scotland in
1777 to study medicine at Edinburgh and then took his degree at Glasgow. From 1780 he spent his professional life in Liverpool where he
married Lucy Wallace, the daughter of a Liverpool merchant. He was physician to the Liverpool Infirmary where he witnessed the dreadful
living conditions of the urban poor. He was a relentless campaigner against slavery and was an advocate of hydrotherapy, in particular,
water cures for fever and other ailments. He published Medical Reports on the Effects of Water, Cold and Warm, as a Remedy in Fevers and
Febrile Diseases (1797). Currie was a pioneer in the use of the clinical thermometer and was the first to make a systematic record in English
of clinical observations with the thermometer. His literary and scientific interests brought him into contact with many distinguished
contemporaries such as Erasmus Darwin, William Wilberforce, Sir Walter Scott and Sir Joseph Banks. Currie was the first editor of the
poetry of Robert Burns (1800) a task he undertook on behalf of the poet’s family. His edition of Burns contains a critical essay and an
historical account of the conditions and character of the Scottish. Currie died at Sidmouth, Devonshire, where the parish church contains his
memorial.
Dr Paul Caffrey
10
3. HUGH DOUGLAS HAMILTON (1740-1808)
Portrait of the Hon. John Monck Mason (1726-1809) 1790
Pastel on paper 25 x 21
Provenance: In the collection of the Duke of Leinster, Carton, County Kildare;
Sold November 1958 at Brockenhurst Manor, Hampshire.
Hamilton was born the son of a wig-maker who had a business in Crow Street, Dublin. He was educated at Robert West’s Academy in
George’s Lane, from c.1750-8, having been placed there by the Dublin Society. Hamilton was awarded several prizes for drawing and
started his career as a portrait painter in Dublin. By 1764 he was in London where he specialized in small oval pastel portraits. In c.1778,
Hamilton went to Rome with his wife and young daughter. They returned to Dublin in 1792 where Hamilton set up a studio, at his house,
on the corner of Clare Street and Merrion Square.
John Monck Mason was a member of parliament and commissioner of revenue for Ireland. He was also interested in drama and was a
noted Shakespeare critic who wrote Comments on the Last Edition of Shakespeare’s Plays (Dublin, 1785) and a commentary on the plays of
Philip Massinger (1779). His portrait was engraved by Harding in 1791 (NGI). John Monck Mason was the son of Sarah Monck, a poetess,
whose poetry was published by Lord Molesworth. She was the daughter of George Monck and married Robert Mason of Mason Brook,
County Galway. Thenceforth the family took the name Monck Mason. The main branch of the Monck family was granted the title Baron
and later Viscount Monck of Ballytrammon, County Wexford. Their seat was Charleville, Enniskerry, County Wicklow.
Dr Paul Caffrey
11
ADAM BUCK (1759-1833)
Adam Buck was born in Cork, the elder son of Jonathan Buck, a silversmith of Castle Street. Unlike his brother, the prolific miniaturist
Frederick Buck (1771-1839/40), he did not attend the Dublin Society Drawing Schools, and his artistic training is unknown. Adam Buck
worked as a miniaturist and painter of small whole-length portraits in Cork where he evolved his own decorative neo-classical style. In
1795 Buck moved to London. Buck was interested in ancient Greek and Roman vase painting. He published a prospectus for a book on
Greek vase painting in 1811. It was intended to be a continuation of Sir William Hamilton’s Collection of Engravings of Engravings from
Ancient Vases (1791-97). One instalment was issued in 1812.
17. Portrait of a young gentleman of the Villiers Family
18. Portrait of Augustus Villiers
Watercolour on card 13.5 x 10.5
Signed: A Buck
Dated: 1820
Watercolour on card 13.5 x 10.5
Signed: A Buck
Dated: 1820
Inscribed on the reverse: …[indecipherable] Villiers Family of the Duke of Buckingham Inscribed on the reverse:
Augustus Villiers Family of the Duke of Buckingham
The sitters are descendants of George Villiers, fifth Duke of Buckingham (1628-87).
Dr Paul Caffrey
6. Sir GEORGE HAYTER P.R.A. (1792-1871)
Portrait of The Right Honourable Sir Frederick Shaw of Bushy Park, County Dublin, 3rd
baronet, PC (1799-1876) 1834
Oil on board, 35.5 x 30.5
Signed: George Hayter
Dated: 1834
Inscribed: Study
This study of Frederick Shaw was painted as a preliminary sketch for his portrait. Hayter
included Shaw’s portrait in his most famous painting: The House of Commons 1833 (National
Portrait Gallery, London) which records the passing of the Great Reform Bill of 1833 and shows
the crowded interior of the old House of Commons. Hayter did studies of almost 400 members
of parliament for the portraits in the finished group picture. The painting took ten years to
complete.
George Hayter was the son of the miniaturist Charles Hayter (1761-1835). He studied at the Royal Academy Schools, Rome and Paris.
During the 1830s he became one of the leading portrait and history painters in London becoming portrait painter to the Queen in 1837.
Frederick Shaw was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and the University of Oxford. In 1819 he married Thomasine Emily, a younger
daughter of the Hon. George Jocelyn and grand-daughter of the 1st Earl of Roden. Shaw was a member of the King’s Inns and was called
to the Bar in 1822. He held the judicial offices of Recorder of Dublin and Dundalk. He was a member of parliament for the City of Dublin
in 1830-1 and 1832. Shaw represented the University of Dublin in the House of Commons from 1832 until his retirement in 1848. In 1835 he
became a member of the Privy Council of Ireland.
Dr Paul Caffrey
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4. SAMPSON TOWGOOD ROCH (1757-1847)
‘The Interior of a Shop’,
Watercolour on paper 18 x 16
Signed
Roch was the elder son of William and Mary Roch of Youghal, Co. Cork. From birth he was both deaf and dumb. At an early age he
showed a great talent for drawing, and was encouraged to paint. Roch was probably taught privately as there is no record of him studying
at the Dublin Society’s Drawing School. By 1779 he was established as a miniaturist in Dublin and was making frequent trips to England.
Roch employed an assistant, the miniaturist Charles Byrne (1757-c.1810), who acted as his interpreter. In 1792 Roch went to live in Bath
where he had a large practice attracting many distinguished clients and royal patronage. Bath became the most fashionable resort, after the
discovery of the Roman baths in 1755. It was customary for visitors to have a miniature portrait painted. Roch returned to live at his family
house at Woodbine Hill, Co. Waterford. There he continued to paint and he did numerous sketches of everyday country life which are a
unique record of pre-famine Ireland. Roch is buried at Ardmore, Co. Waterford.
This watercolour is a rare example of Roch’s work which shows a domestic interior. Painted in Roch’s painstaking miniaturist technique in
minute brushstrokes the interior is reminiscent of Dutch interiors in the manner of Gerard Dou (1613-75). Dou specialized in painting finely
wrought small scenes of everyday life.
Dr Paul Caffrey
13
51. Thomas walmsley
50. Thomas walmsley
14
45. George Barret Jnr
44. George Barret
15
19. WILLIAM TEULON BLANDFORD FLETCHER 1858-1936
‘The Morning of the Pardon, First Arrivals’, 1884
Oil on canvas 89 x 102.5
Signed and dated 1884
Exhibited: Royal Society of British Artists 1883-84, no. 100 £50
Literature: ‘Peintres Britanniques en Bretagne’, Musee de Pont-Aven’, 2004, p.53
Blandford Fletcher was one of an important generation of British Naturalist painters of the 1880’s. He studied in Antwerp, painted in
Brittany, and was a member of the Newlyn School. He was a contemporary and close friend of Walter Osborne’s at Antwerp, and painted
with him in Pont-Aven and Quimperlé, and in English villages. They observed one another at work, and shared ideas about painting from
Nature. He was also a comrade of Stanhope Forbes at Newlyn. Fletcher exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Royal Society of British Artists
and the R.H.A.
Fletcher’s canvas of a rural Breton scene, with rustic figures, and a large church in a leafy woodland setting, gains our attention. The
painting is of a larger scale than the intimate scenes of Breton life by contemporary Irish artists such as Osborne and Nathaniel Hill. We are
attracted by the gourp of figures, the warm pinks and ochres of earth and stonework, the sweet greens of grass and trees; and the sense of
stillness, and airy atmosphere from foreground to background, which the artist skillfully evokes. ‘The title of the painting ‘The Morning of
the Pardon, First Arrivals’ seems apt. The painting has been known from exhibition catalogues, but has remained in private collections for
many years. It is Fletcher’s major Breton painting. So its recent re-discovery is an exciting occasion.
The church has been identified by Mme. Catherine Puget as that at Pencran in the north of Finistere.1 Pencran was only two miles from
Landerneau, an attractive port on the river Elorn.2 Pencran was pleasingly set on a wooded slope above the river. The church dated from
the 16th century, and was distinguished by its fine porch, triumphal arch, and elegant belfrey. 2 Outside was a calvary, dating from 1821.
Fletcher, interestingly, does not include these in his painting, but he does feature the gateway with its three distinctive lantern turrets.
Although Landerneau was situated on the railway line between Brest and Morlaix it is a mark of Fletcher’s independence that he should
choose to paint in the secluded village of Pencran, far from the artist communities at Pont-Aven and Concarneau in the south of Finistere.
16
A pardon was held at Pencran each year. The figures of several Breton men, women and boys are shown outside the church in a woodland
setting. Many artists and writers in Brittany were fascinated by the Pardons which they witnessed in villages and isolated chapels on
special dates; they perceived these as examples of a unique Breton traditional culture. Pardons were depicted in a series of paintings by
French Realists such as Boudin, Jules Breton, Dagnan-Bouveret and Lhermitte; by Serusier, Cottet and Lucien Simon; and by Irish and
British artists, such as Augustus Burke, Chetwood-Aiken, Norman Garstin and May Guinness. But rather than showing the actual event,
Fletcher takes an original approach: showing a smaller group waiting before the crowds arrive. Men and women, older and young people,
are shown in a loose group waiting. In the centre of the composition is a grey-haired man standing, and two seated women with baskets
of apples. To the left are two standing boys; while on the right is a woman seated on her own. There are a couple of other figures in the
churchyard behind.
Fletcher shows amibition in the scale of his canvas, and in the conception of the subject; the posing of the figures in an open air setting, and
the execution of the painting. One woman wishes to sell her apples, while another sits patiently, knitting. The man, who holds his hat under
his arm, may be a beggar. The two standing boys lounge, hands in pockets, hoping for some employment, or entertainment. Each figure
has a different posture, looking in different directions; observing the others, or lost in his or her own thoughts. Fletcher captures a time of
waiting, a moment of calm before the crowds arrive.
He represents carefully the various costumes worn by the Bretons: one woman in white bonnet, blue-grey jacket, and fawn apron, the other
with pale blue headwear and blue apron. The man is clad in the breeches and leggings of an earlier generation, while the boys wear modern
trousers. These figures have close similarities, both in pose, and in attention to detail and modelling, and impastoed texures to Breton
painting by Osborne, particularly ‘A Grey Morning in a Breton Farmyard’ and ‘Driving a Bargain’, both painted in 1883, (the latter which
show groups of local people in the centre of Pont-Aven on market day); and both have likewise appeared on the market in recent years.3 As
in Osborne’s genre pictures, each of Fletcher’s figures forms a little vignette, and could provide an attractive study in its own right. There
are also echoes of Nathaniel Hill’s ‘Breton Peasants waiting at the Convent Door’, 1884; and of open-air scenes of Brittany by academic
French artists such as Deyrolle, Buland and Girardet.
Like Osborne, Fletcher gives careful attention to the rustic textures of the setting: The walls in the foreground, the weathered blocks of stone
out of which the church is built, the small tiles of the sagging roof, painted individually, and the delicate tracery of the decorated window,
in which the trees are reflected. Similarly, he observes the unusual wide stone stile, the worn steps, the half open gate, and the three
interesting cupolas on top of the gateposts; and the slender crosses in the church yard. But Fletcher’s approach to the trees is different from
that of Osborne. Instead of the richly textured foliage that the latter enjoyed, Fletcher’s leaves are rendered in a flatter, more uniform way,
providing a delicate verdant frieze; and the grass, like-wise, is lighter and more green, nicely complementing the warm pinks and ochres of
the earth and stonework.
‘The Morning of the Pardon’ was exhibited at the Royal Society of British Artists in London in 1884. It was priced £50-, quite a substantial
sum at that time. A label on the reverse of the canvas reads; ‘Esmonde, Old Park Road, Enfield, N.’, the address from which the picture was
sent to the R.S.B.A. Another larger label on the reverse reads: ‘The Morning of the ‘Pardon’ First Arrivals’ by Blandford Fletcher 76 Fellows
Road, South Hampstead, London NW No.5’, indicating that the picture may have been exhibited at another venue.
William Teulon Blandford Fletcher was born in London in 1858.4 He studied at the Royal College of Art, 1875-1879, in 1879 he won a
Queen’s medal, and exhibited at the Royal Academy for the first time. In that year, or in 1880, he visited Dinan in Brittany, and painted
watercolours of street scenes and landscapes. He studied in the ‘Natuur’ class of Verlat at the Academie Royale des Beaux Arts, Antwerp,
1880-82. His time there also over-lapped with that of Osborne, and the two artists became close friends. Fletcher also met Stanhope Forbes
in Paris.
Watercolours of Dinan and Antwep were shown at the R.S.B.A. Fletcher spent the summers of 1882 and 1883 in Brittany. He may have met
Bastien-Lepage in Concarneau.5 Like Obsorne he spent summer 1883 in Pont-Aven, and autumn in Quimperle. He was lodging at Pension
Gloanec in Pont-Aven from May-October. During this period he was probably working on the present painting ‘The Morning of the Pardon,
First Arrivals’ Pencran. In Quimperle he painted ‘Kitchen Garden in November’, while Osborne completed ‘Apple Gathering’, (National
Gallery of Ireland). In January 1884 Osborne gave Fletcher a small painting of the square in Quimperle, and in 1889 a small panel of Rye.
In the meantime Fletcher spent from August 1884 to March 1885 at the artists’ colony at Newlyn, Cornwall, renewing his friendship with
Forbes there. In 1887-89 he painted with Osborne at Newbury, Uffington, Rye and Staunton, painting English village scenes and rural
subjects. A fine example of such rustic pictures ‘Village of Blewbury, Oxfordshire’ was exhibited at the Gorry Gallery in 2005.6 Osborne
made a small drawing of Fletcher smoking a pipe.
Fletcher married, and moved to Dorking, Surrey. His painting develped towards genre and historical subjects. His daughter Rosamund
became a noted sculptor. She was later befriended by Irish art historian Jeanne Sheehy, biographer of Walter Osborne, and generously
presented her fathers’ painting ‘Kitchen Garden in November’, to the National Gallery of Ireland in 1984.
Julian Campbell
1.
We are very grateful to Mme. Catherine Puget, former Conservateur at the Musee de Pont-Aven, for her help in identifying the location of Fletcher’s painting at Pencran.
2.
‘Brittany’, Michelin 1979, p.113; 2005, p.173.
3.
‘Irish art’, James Adam, Dublin, 5 Dec. 2006, no. 93, and 29 May 2002, no. 23.
4.
For fuller biography of Fletcher, see C. Fox and F. Greenacre ‘Artist of the Newlyn School, 1880-1900’, 1979, p.249; and J. Campbell, in Gorry Gallery, March 2005, p.28-29.
5.
J. Sheehy, ‘Walter Osborne’, 1983, p.23, 76.
6.
‘Irish Paintings’, Gorry Gallery, March 2005, no. 44.
17
20. SIR JOHN LAVERY RA, RSA, RHA 1856-1941
‘The Monk ‘
Oil in canvas, 40.2 x 32.2
Signed lower left, J Lavery, 1882
Provenance: Private Collection, USA
John Lavery’s early success as a painter is the stuff of legends. An orphan with no prospects, he ruthlessly clawed his way into a difficult
profession, peopled by young artists who were much better off. Failure was not an option, and from the start of his career in the late 1870s,
he had to produce works which would find a market. He had no name and no brand and Glasgow, where he worked as a retoucher in a
photographic studio, was well supplied with painters. Undeterred, he attended evening classes at the Haldane Academy and perfected
skills which would equip him to become a popular ‘gluepot’ painter turning out everything from bogus Old Masters to sentimental
costume-pieces. Painting ‘Faust’, or ‘Gretchen’, or troubadours, or Regency bucks appealed to different layers of a market that was
extremely fickle. Some of these works sold and others were returned.
Within a year or two Lavery encountered patrons whose taste was more advanced and who were beginning to be interested in continental
trends. Around 1880, dealers like Daniel Cottier were selling Barbizon landscapes to the textile and shipbuilding barons of the Clyde and
the painter realized that in order to be successful, he needed to acquire knowledge that could only be gained elsewhere. This prompted
him to study in London, an experience which he did not find edifying. While enduring two miserable terms at Heatherley’s art school,
he retained his Glasgow studio at 101 St Vincent Street, producing The Incense Burner, (fig 1), a devotional picture recalling the work
of Alphonse Legros, an artist renowned at this point for his church interiors of northern France. Then, in November 1881 a strange
opportunity presented itself and he set off for Paris, his journey paid for by the relative of an insane Frenchman who had to be chaperoned
to the asylum at Charenton.
‘Gluepot’, a pejorative term invented by the Glasgow Boys to describe the kind of painting they were rebelling against, was given its name because of the liberal use of thick browning
glazes to give an old master effect. See Roger Billcliffe, The Glasgow Boys, 1985 (John Murray), pp. 29-31.
John Lavery, The Life of a Painter, 1940 (Cassell and Co), p. 46.
Kenneth McConkey, Sir John Lavery, 1993 (Canongate), p. 19.
18
Once in the French capital, Lavery was unwilling to relinquish the possibility
of sales back in Glasgow. He immediately began producing head studies of
brigands and Arab musicians, developing greater sophistication in his work.
Although unlikely to appeal to his Calvinist clients, The Monk comes from
this phase of his work. Its subject and treatment more common in French
than in Scottish art, had been treated consistently by Jean-Baptiste-Camille
Corot throughout his career, and Lavery may possibly have seen works like
Italian Monk Reading, 1827 (fig 2) had he looked in dealers’ windows. Of
more immediate consequence was Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouveret’s
St Herbland, a dramatic study for a decorative scheme, showing the saint in
monk’s habit, reading from a prayer-book. This and Léon Bonnat’s Ribera at
Rome, containing a group of monks processing down a flight of stone steps
being sketched by the young Ribera, were both illustrated in contemporary
publications. The currency of these images is sufficient to confirm the French
Fig 1 John Lavery
origins of The Monk, and widen the scope of his early borrowings. It avoids for
‘The Incense Burner’,
instance, the soft anti-clerical humour of popular British genre painters such as
1881, Private Collection
Dendy Sadler. If indeed he did pause to consider Bonnat, Lavery would have
seen a painter who looked to seventeenth century Spanish Caravaggesque sources, just as he was to do when
he visited the Prado on two occasions in the early nineties.
Fig 2 Jean-BaptisteCamille Corot, ‘Italian
Monk Reading,’ c. 1827,
Albright-Knox Art Gallery,
Buffalo
The Monk is carefully
painted, as befits the
work of a diligent
student. While we may
assume that the setting
is clearly adapted
from other sources,
the flowers and plants
are delicately handled.
Careful observation of
the pentimenti reveals
some rethinking in the
background. Nevertheless
the value of this exercise
from the artist’s point
Fig 4 Léon Bonnat, Ribera at Rome, c. 1880 unlocated (illus Magazine of Art,
of view clearly lies in
1881, p. 239)
the opportunity to take
Fig 3 Pascal-Adolphe-Jean
a vanishing point and
Dagnan-Bouveret’s ‘St
master perspective on a flight of steps leading up to a trellis. Lavery
Herbland’, 1880 unlocated
handles these complexities with skill and although the fall of sunlight
(Salon Illustré, 1880, p. 500)
from the upper right shows some inconsistency, it does not detract from
the ensemble. A year later, when he arrived in Grez-sur-Loing, just such
a stone staircase attracted his attention (fig 5).
By this stage Lavery was firmly a painter of secular subjects. Dominicans or Capuchins engrossed
in their breviaries no longer appealed. It took over thirty years before he returned to the church to
paint The Madonna of the Lakes. This was followed by a sequence of clerical portraits, starting with
the exceptional Cardinal Logue, 1921 (Ulster Museum, Belfast) and a project to paint a crucifixion for
the Sisterhood of Mary Convent in Lisburn, Co. Antrim. If he took solace in the church during his
declining years, early works long since dispersed such as The Censor Bearer and The Monk would
remind him of the imagery that dominated his Irish Catholic upbringing.
Kenneth McConkey
Fig 5 La Laveuse, 1883,
Private Collection
Since this canvas bears a large manufacturers stamp containing the word ‘cadrement’, we may assume that the picture was painted in Paris. The Monk is unlikely to be the original title of
the work.
Corot died at the beginning of 1875. Corot painted twelve pictures of monks throughout his long career - the first (fig 1), being in 1827 and the last in 1874. The early work and others from
the series appeared in the posthumous studio sale in 1875 and several were circulating in the Paris trade in the 1880s. See Vincent Pomarède, Corot, 1996, (exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and other venues), pp. 379-81. For further reference to early British collectors of Corot, see Kenneth McConkey, ‘Silver Twilights and Rose Pink Dawns,
British collectors of Corot at the turn of the Century’, in GP Weisberg ed, Corot, 1989, (exhibition catalogue, Odakyu Grand Gallery, Tokyo and other venues), pp. 25-33.
For Dagnan-Bouveret, see Salon Illustré, 1880, (FG Dumas ed., British and Foreign Artists Association) p. 500; For Bonnat see The Magazine of Art, 1881, p. 239.
It is of course equally possible that The Monk appealed to Lavery’s Irish Roman Catholic roots, church commissions in the years leading up to the Catholic Revival at the end of the decade,
being more prevalent in France or Ireland than in Calvinist Scotland.
19
21. EUGENE LAURENT VAIL, 1857-1934
‘Leonie’, Etaples, c.1887 or 1893
Oil on canvas, 65 x 54.5
Original exhibition label verso with artist’s name, title and number 26
Eugene Vail was a cosmopolitan artist of American-French background. He was one of a close-knit circle of young painters in the ateliers in
Paris, and at the artists’ colonies of Grez-sur-Loing, Concarneau and Etaples, during the 1880’s. He was a close friend of Irish artist Frank
O’Meara and John Lavery. His pictures enjoyed great success at the Paris Salon, and he was awarded the Legion d’Honneur.
Eugene Laurent Vail was born of an American father and French mother in St.Servan, near St.Malo, Brittany in 1857.1 He gained an
engineering degree at the Stevens Institute of Tehcnology, Hoboken, New Jersey. He worked as a cartographer on a scientific expedition in
the West of America. Vail was also a keen sportsman, and had an interest in theatre and art.
He began to study at the Art Students’ League New York, in the studios of William Chase and Caroll Beckwith. He travelled to Paris c.1882,
and became a pupil at the Academie Julian. He became a close friend of John Lavery’s there. In March 1882 he entered the Ecole des Beaux
Arts, studying in the atelier of Cabanel. He was also a pupil of Collin and Dagnan-Bouveret. Vail first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1883.
In common with many of his contemporaries, Vail was impatient to paint from Nature. Many years later Lavery acknowledged the
influence of his comrade in introducing him to Grez:
20
“I came to know Gres-sur-Loing through Eugene Vail. We were both at the Academie Julian, and we decided to go there to spend the
weekend. I remained there for nine months.”2 Hawkins also met Frank O’Meara there.
In 1883 Vail first exhibited at the Paris Salon. In the same year he visited Brittany: Pont-Aven, and Concarneau, in the company of American
students Harrison and Simmons. Vail favoured marine and harbour subjects. His best-known Breton painting ‘Le port de la Peche,
Concarneau’ (Musee des Beaux Arts, Brest), is a large, low-key study of the harbour and fishing boats. Although sombre in tone there is a
glowing twilight atmosphere, that was perhaps to influence Charles Cottet’s paintings of Brittany. The picture was exhibited at the Salon in
1884. It was purchased by the French State for the Musée Luxembourg.
In 1887 Vail moved to Etaples, Pas-de-Calais. He spent the winter there, lodging with his friends from Grez, O’Meara and Scottish artist
Middleton Jameson. Although less well-known than the great art colonies, and less picturesque that Concarneau, Etaples was convenient to
reach, being close to Boulogne; and living was cheaper there than at Grez. O’Meara wrote:
“Etaples is a very convenient place – lots of motifs about, plenty of models and studios to be had cheap.”3
French artist Cazin, a native of Pas-de-Calais, gained inspiration from the landscape around Etaples. Amongst the artists there in Vail’s time
were Jameson and O’Meara, French painters Boudin and Tattegrain, the Belgian Faradyn, the Americans Walter Gay and Birge Harrison,
Dudley Hardy, and a contingent from Cork: William G. Barry, Egerton Coghill and Edith Somerville. Sarah C. Harrison was there in 1890,
and E.M. Synge and Frida Molony in 1909. A large number of British and Australian artists continued to work there up to the First World
War.
While O’Meara studied figures at the harbour, and Barry and Coghill painted woodland scenes, O’Meara wrote to Lavery that:
“Vail is painting the deck of a fishing boat in a heavy sea, life-size, and I think it will be very fine,”4
Vail exhibited at the Salon again in 1886, and in 1888, when he was awarded a 3rd class medal. His work was praised by Albert Wolff,
art critic of ‘Le Figaro’.5 Vail served on the international jury of the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889. Four of his pictures were also
exhibited there, and he received a gold medal. Some of Vail’s painting were known for their dark tonality. Like Welden Hawkins, some of
his subsequent work became more decorative and Symboliste, showing the influences of Whistler, Japonisme and the Nabis.6
Vail may have visited Etaples again c.1893, for his painting ‘Soir dAutomne, Etaples’ was exhibited at the Salon in 1894.
Vail was awarded the Legion d’Honneur in 1894. Six of his paintings were exhibited at the Salon Nationale in 1899, and his work was
praised by Gabriel Mouray in ‘The Studio’.7
The present portrait shows an attractive young woman, wearing a headscarf or bonnet, and she is viewed in profile. On the reverse of the
stretcher the words ‘Leonie’ and ‘Etaples’ are written, probably by the artist himself. Leonie evidently is the name of the model. The word
‘Etaples’, and an art suppliers’ stamp: ‘Caron Cousin. Peintre Couleurs et Toiles – Etaples’, on the back of the canvas, indicate that the
picture was painted in this town probably in c.1887, or c.1893
Leonie has a fine profile, and healthy red cheeks, set against the simple white costume which she is wearing. Vail enjoyed a profile view,
as can be seen in ‘A Breton Sunday’, c.1890 (National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution), which shows a pious woman
in scarf, standing in front of a harbour. On the one hand, ‘Leonie’ has the heroic quality of a peasant woman viewed in profile, by Realist
painter Jules Beton, for example ‘Repose’, 1864, (Musee des Beaux Arts, Arras), and ‘Jeanne Calvet’, 1865, (Francine Clark Art Institute,
Willliamstown).
But on the other hand, Leonie is an ordinary country girl, whose rosy colouring reveals her hard-working, healthy life in the open air, and
by the sea. Her face is well modelled, which the dress is indicated in simple manner, with relaxed, criss-cross brushstrokes. Vail follows the
‘Academie Julian’ manner, combining carefully represented face agains a more sketchy treatment of clothing. But his relaxed manner also
suggests the influence of Impressionist painters such as Manet and Berthe Morisot.
Julian Campbell
1
See David Sellin, ‘Americans in Brittany and Normandy, 1860-1910’, Phoenix Art Museum, 1982, p.159, and ‘Peintres Americains en Bretagne’, Musee de Pont-Aven, 1995, p. 85.
Dr. Davil Sellin was a pioneering researcher and writer on American artists in Brittany, and elsewhere in France, and also a collector. His recent death is a sad loss to the art historical
world.
2F. Sadler, ‘L’Hotel Chevillon et les Artistes de Grez-sur-Loing, 1938, p.14
3
F. O’Meara, letter to John Lavery, 8 Dec. 1887 (Tate Gallery Archives).
4
F. O’Meara, letter, ibid.
5
F. O’Meara, letter, ibid.
6
Rene le Bihan, in H. Belbeoch, ‘Les Peintres de Concarneau’, 1993, p.78
7
G. Mouray, ‘The Studio’, June 1899, p.3
21
22. ADOLPHE PETERELLE 1874-1947
‘Breton Woman with Cross’
Crayon on paper: 36.5 x 16 cms
Signed, lower left: ‘Peterelle’
Provenance: La Poussiere du Temps, Paris.
Adolphe Peterelle was a French painter and draughtsman. He was
born in Geneva to French parents, on 26th June 1874. He moved to
Paris at the age of 17, c.1901. He also made a visit to Brittany, and he
painted in Switzerland. In his oil paintings and drawings he represented
women and everyday subjects, for example, mother and child themes,
washerwomen, girls bathing and nudes; and dancers and musicians, for
instance `Girl playing a Tambourine’ and ‘The Cellist’. He also painted
landscapes.
Peterelle exhibited in Paris at the Salon des Independents, 1923-34, the
Salon des Tuileries, and the Salon d’Automne. One-man exhibitions
were held at the Galeries Bernheim in 1930, Charpentier in 1938,
and de France in 1942. He died on 27 October 1947. A large Peterelle
retrospective was held at the Musee Galleria in Paris in 1952. This
included 106 paintings and 74 drawings.
His work is represented in many museums and galleries in France and
Switzerland, especially at the Musée des Beaux Arts, Dijon, where there
are 29 works, and the Petit Palais, Geneva, where there are 14 pictures.
In spite of this exposure of his art, Benezit’s ‘Dictionnaire des Peintres’
describes Peterelle in evocative terms:
“He was a reclusive artist, mystical in temperament, and did nothing
to make his work known, though his artistic output was considerable.
He depicted people at their daily occupations, hinting at their inner
thoughts and feelings... He also liked to depict women, and did a large
number of drawings, using a variety of techniques- pencil, Indian ink,
red chalk, gouache. He treated volume in the post-Cezanne tradition.”
(Benezit, vol.10, Grund, 2006, p.1236-37).
The present drawing was made during Peterelle’s visit to Brittany. It
could relate to a painting ‘Breton Woman’ (sold in Paris, 19 July 1942);
or it seems likely that it is a study for a large painting of a religious
procession. Images of men and women carrying tall crosses or candles at
Pardons or religious processsions in Brittany had fascinated artists from
the mid-19th Century onwards. This can be seen in haunting paintings
and drawings by Jules Breton, Lhermitte and Dagnan-Bouveret, and in the
work of 20th Century artists, Such as Cottet and Simon.
But rather than representing crowds of people, Peterelle makes a study of a single young woman. Her pose recalls that in the sensitive
crayon study of a girl by Lhermitte for his painting ‘The Pardon of Ploumanach’, 1878-79; and the beautiful fleeting Impressionistic painting
‘Religious Procession, Brittany’, by Aloysius O’Kelly, (Allied Irish Banks Collection), in which three young women are walking with a tall
cross.
Peterelle’s figure is pleasingly fitted into the upright sheet of paper, her head being placed at top centre, while her left foot is neatly placed,
parallel to the lower right-hand edge of the paper. Peterelle employs thick crayon in a relaxed way, in the manner of Gauguin’s Breton
drawings: a loose outline to convey the girl’s figure walking with the tall cross, while hatched diagonal strokes are used to convey the tone
of her long dress.
Julian Campbell
22
23. ROBERT ANDERSON, R.S.A. 1842-1885
‘Wanderers, Brittany’
Watercolour on paper 75.5 x 52.5
Signed and dated 1883, Also signed and inscribed on
original label verso
Exhibited: Royal Scottish Academy, 1884, number 956
Robert Anderson was born in Edinburgh in 1842. He
gained a reputation as a line engraver, but increasingly
turned to watercolour painting. He based himself in
Edinburgh, but he was attracted to scenes of rural life, and
he made studies of churches. He often represented fishing
subjects, beach scenes, fishing boats and sometimes
stormy seas.
Anderson was also a keen traveller in Europe. He visited
Ireland in c.1870, painting ‘An Irish Cabin in Connemara’.
This was exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1871.
He also painted in Holland in 1881, Seville in Spain in
1882, and Brittany in 1883. Paintings of these places were
shown at the R.S.A. in the early 1880’s. Anderson also
exhibited at the Glasgow Institute, the Royal Society of
Watercolourists, and the New Watercolour Society. He was
elected a member of the R.S.W. in 1878, and an Associate
of the R.S.A. in 1879.
On his visit to Western France in 1883 Anderson painted
‘A Breton Beggar’ and the present picture ‘Wanderers,
Brittany’. The theme of travellers on the roadway and
beggars was one that had attracted visiting artists in
Brittany since early in the century. And the subject of an
old man with a stick accompanied by his granddaughter
or grandson was one that fascinated artists in Normandy, Brittany, and as far afield as Egypt. This can be seen in paintings such as ‘Pauvre
Aveugle’, 1828, by George R. Lewis, ‘Café in Cairo’, 1868, by Famars Testas, and pictures by Augustus Burke and Aloysius O’Kelly.
‘Wanderers, Brittany’, 1883 shows Anderson’s mastery in the medium of watercolour, and his delicacy in the treatment of light. Often
associated with small-scale works or as studies for oil paintings, this watercolour is striking in its large scale, and the meticulous way it is
executed.
Two figures are shown on a roadway on a sunny day: a girl in a bonnet, who holds the arm of an old man, perhaps her grandfather.
Anderson gently observes the familial relationship between the two, the youthful, healthy face of the girl, and the weary expression of the
man who walks with a stick. Likewise he represents their hands, and their Breton costume carefully. The girl wears more modern clothing:
white bonnet and collar, blue blouse and apron, stockings and clogs, while her grandfather wears the garb of an older generation: hat,
buttoned blue jerkin, waistcoat, wide belt, baggy cream breeches and brown leggings, and clogs with straw in them.
The figures have been walking on the road, but now pause, as if for a photograph. Although shown in an open-air setting, it is possible that
Anderson posed them in the studio, which was common practice at the time. Yet the fall of sunlight upon the figures, and the shadows cast
upon the ground, are treated most convincingly.
Anderson leaves the sky pale, allowing us to focus on the man and girl. But the distinctive blue-green hue in the clothing is echoed in the
foliage in the background. The branches and leaves at the left-hand side of the picture are painted with great delicacy.
Although deriving from a more academic tradition that some of the younger artists working in France, showing in this present exhibition
at the Gorry gallery, Anderson’s watercolour shows him embracing the new Realism. ‘Wanderers, Brittany’ was painted in 1883, the same
year that Osborne, Kavanagh, Hill, Forbes, and Blandford Fletcher were working in Brittany; and Osborne painted ‘Apple Gathering,
Quimperlé’, (National Gallery of Ireland).
‘Wanderers, Brittany’, along with its companion picture ‘A Breton Beggar’, was exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1884.
Julian Campbell
1 Peter J.M. McEwan, ‘Dictionary of Scottish Art and Architecture’, 1994.
23
24. LOUIS WELDEN HAWKINS 1849-1910
‘Fisherfolk looking out to sea’
Oil on canvas 50 x 100
Signed, lower right: ‘L. Welden Hawkins’
Louis Welden Hawkins’ painting shows three figures standing on a sandy track in a flat landscape, while a fourth person can be glimpsed,
standing in a doorway in the line of cottages. Although the sea is not visible in the painting, the indications are that this is a coastal scene:
the sandy earth and tawny marram grass and the line of low thatched fishermen’s cottages, depicted in a horizontal canvas; the gestures
of the women, one pointing into the distance and the other shading her eyes; the man with the sou’wester; and even the shrimping net,
propped against a wall.
If this is the case, the picture belongs to the classic 19th Century genre of fisher girls and men ‘looking out to sea’, or ‘waiting for the fishing
boats’, set in fishing communities and harbours around the coasts of Europe. The figures waiting, pointing and staring, have echoes of
heroic paintings, such as by Winslow Homer at Cullercoats, Stanhope Forbes at Newlyn, P.S. Kroyer at Skagen, A.Artz at Scheveningen,
Jules Breton at Douarnenez, and later Paul Henry at Achill.1 Such images express the hopes and hardships of fishing people’s lives.
Yet in Hawkins’ painting, the precise location of the scene is not certain. The girl in the background, with small bonnet and apron, could
be wearing the working clothes of Brittany. But the cloak of the woman in the foreground is not unlike those worn by shepherdesses in
Barbizon, while her large bonnet with bow, and low clogs with strap, could be the costume of Normandy.
There is a pleasing bareness to the palette: sandy colours, pale greys, ochres and umbers, that reflects the austerity of the people’s lives. The
flat, sandy landscape, with dun-coloured grass, and low thatched cottages, are conveyed with bold impastoed brushstrokes. In contrast
to the more pale, subdued tone of Hawkins’ earlier Grez-sur-Loing pictures, the figures are painted with impressive Realism; they stand
in strong sunlight , looking to the left, and casting shadows upon the ground. A strong sense of human presence is evoked by the woman,
whose face and bonnet are beautifully painted. White impasto vividly convey sunlight upon the bonnet, and there is a lovely touch of
pink in the woman’s collar. The fold and textures of the cloak are boldly modelled in light and shadow, showing Hawkins at the height of
his powers as a Realist. This, and the signature ‘L.Welden Hawkins’, placed at the lower right-hand edge of the canvas, probably date the
picture to the mid or late 1880s.
Hawkins’ career spanned the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, and he was deeply influenced by some of the modern art movements of the
day: Naturalism, Symbolism, Art Nouveau and Impressionism. He associated with many notable artists, poets and critics in Paris. It is not
surprising that an artist who led such a varied and cosmopolitan life: born in Germany of an English father and Austrian mother, growing
up in Britain, studying art in Paris, settling in France, and marrying an Italian woman, should also have Irish connections; Hawkins was a
fellow-student of George Moore’s at the Academie Julian, (and apparently a cousin), and he was a comrade of John Lavery’s at the artists’
colony of Grez-sur-Loing.
Louis Hawkins was born at Esslingen near Stuttgart in July 1849. His father was an English naval officer, which his mother Louise Sopransi
was an Austrian baroness, and daughter of a Field Marshall.2 Hawkins was brought up in England. At the age of fifteen he joined the Royal
Navy. But then he decided to study art. He went to Paris in 1870, and entered the Academie Julian, studying in the atelier of Bougereau
and Lefebvre.3 He seems to have remained at Julian’s until 1879. In August 1876, Hawkins also enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, in the
atelier of Boulanger.
24
At Julian’s Hawkins became a friend of budding Irish writer George Moore. Hawkins clearly fascinated Moore, and in his ‘Confessions of
a Young Man’ published in 1888, and ‘Hail and Farewell’, 1911,4 he wrote at length about his Bohemian, and often hard-up, friend who he
refers to as ‘Henry Marshall’, (and sometimes, ‘Lewis Ponsonby Marshall’.) The two shared lodgings at no.76, Rue de la Tour des Dames,
and in November 1875 at Galerie Feydeau, Passage des Panoramas. Marshall supplemented his studies by decorating porcelain. (Moore
claims to have introduced him to Manet and Degas.) Hawkins also met Whistler.
Hawkins settled in France, and adopted the name of his mother Baroness von Welden as his middle name.5 Around 1880 he moved to
Grez-sur-Loing, near the Forest of Fontainebleau, and became a member of the community of foreign artists there: Frank O’Meara, Lavery,
Stott of Oldham, Carl Larsson and R.A.M. Stevenson. In his autobiography ‘The Life of a Painter’ John Lavery recalls Hawkins working
on a large canvas, featuring a young woman and man standing in a graveyard.6 The subdued tonality and reflective atmosphere of many
Grez pictures is evident, but an attractive pink tone runs through the girl’s bonnet, the blossom, and the rooftops behind. In 1881 Hawkins
exhibited this picture, entitled ‘The Orphans’, at the Paris Salon (Société des Artistes Francais). It won a 3rd class medal, and was purchased
for the Musée Luxembourg for 10,000 francs.7 This was a prestigious event for a non-French artist. (The picture is currently in the Musee
d’Orsay, Paris).
At Grez Hawkins painted other oils and watercolours of peasant girls standing or working in the landscape. These include ‘Girl with
Flowers’; and the recently-re-discovered ‘Jeune fille a la Corde’ exhibited at the Frederick Gallery, Dublin in 1999.8 in a similar setting to
‘The Orphans’, but with a lighter verdant tone, the picture shows a girl hanging her washing out amongst trees.
Hawkins was based at Barbizon c.1884-87, and painted further pictures of peasant girls and women minding geese, knitting, the mother of
the fisherman, and so on. It is not known if Hawkins visited Normandy or Brittany then, but the present picture may belong to this period.
Hawkins was a regular exhibitor at the Salon Francais, 1881-91. He settled in Paris in the late eighties, or c.1890, and painted studies around
the city. He met Italian woman Raffaela Zeppa, and their daughter Jacqueline was born in 1892.9 In the same year Hawkins visited Brittany,
and two Breton studies were shown at Salon de Independents. He became a French citizen in 1895, and he and Raffaela married the
following year.
In the late 1880’s his work began to be influenced by Puvis de Chavannes; and in the nineties, like many artists of the period, he moved
away from Naturalism to an art in which symbolic and spiritual elements were also present. Hawkins’ painting was influenced by the PreRaphaelites, and he became deeply involved with the Symboliste movement, becoming friends with the poet Mallarmé, Rodin, Carriére,
and other artists and writers.
Hawkins exhibited widely,10 at the Salon des Independents, 1892-93, the Salon de la Rose + Croix, 1894-95, the Société Nationale des Beaux
Arts (Salon Nationale), 1894-1910, and at La Libre Estetic in Brussels in 1894-98. His ‘Orphans’ of 1881 was exhibited at the Exposition
Universelle in 1900. His Symboliste oils and watercolours were praised by critics.
Hawkins made black-and-white illustrations for Symboliste journals. He also painted watercolours of Paris. From 1900 he undertook a
series of gold-framed fans and masks in an alluring Pre-Raphaelite manner. Amongst his most beautiful portraits are those of his daughter
Jacqueline.
Meanwhile an Impressionist interest began to develop in his landscapes from the late 19th Century onwards. In 1905 Hawkins and his
family moved to Perros-Guerec in Brittany.11 He painted attractive Impressionistic landscapes and coastal scenes. In 1908 he was working at
Le Pouldu, where he painted ‘Breton Girl at the Beach’.12 Another Breton painting shows a girl reading in front of a gorse bush.13
Hawkins died in Paris in 1910. In his honour seven of his paintings were exhibited at the Salon National the following year. Many of
his paintings are in public collections in Paris: in the Louvre, the Musee d’Orsay, the Petit Palais and Musee Carnavalet; and in Nantes
and Nice. Likewise in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, where a Hawkins exhibition was held in 1993, accompanied by an excellent
catalogue by Lucas Bonekamp.
Julian Campbell
1
eg. Paul Henry ‘The Watcher’, 1911, (S.B. Kennedy, 2003, no. 32);
‘The Boats are coming’, by William Norton, Grosvenor Gallery, 1888, no. 186, where a woman is also pointing into the distance.
2
‘Louis Welden Hawkins, 1949-1910’ by Lucas Bonekamp, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, 1993 p.7
3
List of students at Academie Julian, (Archives Nationale de France, 63 AS 1 (2)).
4
George Moore, ‘Confessions of a Young Man’, London, 1888;
George Moore, ‘Hail and Farewell. Ave, Salve, Vale’, London, 1888;
5
L. Bonekamp, p.71
6
John Lavery, ‘The Life of a Painter’, London, 1940, p.54-55; see also F. Sadler, ‘L’Hotel Chevillon’
7
L. Bonekamp, p.27
8
’Important Irish Art,’ Frederick Gallery, Dublin, July 1999, no.8, David Britton.
9
L. Bonekamp, p.10
10
see L. Bonekamp, p.24;
11
L. Bonekamp, p.20
12
illustrated in ‘Les Peintres de Pont-Aven’, by Andre Cariou, Rennes, 1994, p.120
13
Hotel Drouot, Paris
25
25. Aloysius O’kelly 1853-c.1941
‘Tavern Interior’
Oil on canvas (laid on board) 43.3 x 33
Signed and monogrammed lr: A. O’Kelly
This painting fits into O’Kelly’s first Breton phase in the late 1870s and is consistent with a number of other paintings from this period, such
as The Evening Pipe and Breton Interior (Rabbit Stew). It features the single known example of his signature in monogram form.
It is an interesting work in so far as it demonstrates many formative traits of O’Kelly as an artist. In 1874, O’Kelly was enrolled in Ecole des
Beaux-Arts in Paris, gaining access into the most prestigious studio of them all, that of Jean-Léon Gérôme.
Gérôme instructed his students to work on the major passages step-by-step, to block-in the figures with short strokes, in outline first, using
the principal shade, striving for the action of the figure. Having established the overall impression, the drawing was completed before the
modelling, and, finally, the shading was undertaken. Gérôme thus taught his students to draw clearly, accurately and volumetrically. He
worked the individual figures, in order of importance. This painting reveals three different stages of development: the seated man is well
finished, the group of three figures in the background are schematic, while the seated saint in the painting on the wall is barely blocked-in.
As an ethnographic realist, Gérôme produced paintings that are modest in size, meticulous, detailed, accurate and literal; O’Kelly also
studied with Joseph-Florentin-Léon Bonnat. Bonnat taught the importance of draughtsmanship, fidelity to the model, broad values, and the
use of dramatic light and shade – all qualities that we can see emerging here.
During the long summer breaks, huge numbers of artists made the annual painting pilgrimage from the ateliers of Paris to Brittany, in the
late nineteenth century. O’Kelly was no exception. In Pont-Aven, the long-haired painters went native themselves, wearing loose flannel
shirts, paint-stained corduroys, battered wide-brimmed hats and wooden sabots stuffed with straw. O’Kelly seems to have taken to it with
gusto. Not only did these artists live, eat and drink together; they painted identical themes, using the same settings and compositions; it is
even possible to recognize the same peasants from one painting to another. And indeed, we can recognize the man on the left from several
other paintings by O’Kelly.
Inevitably, Irish visitors to Brittany thrived on the common historical, cultural and ethnic connections. Many of the artists focused on what
they saw as the picturesque costumes, rural poverty, backwardness, child-like simplicity, social inadequacies, superstitious rituals and
strange religious customs. But whether he gravitated towards Brittany or Connemara, the more attuned artist would have been aware
that both were communities in transition where the realities of culture, language and identity were under re-negotiation. O’Kelly’s Breton
paintings increasingly reflected a predominantly industrious, healthy and dignified people.
Prof. Niamh O’Sullivan
26
30. Frederick Newenham (1807-1859)
‘Rich and Rare were the Gems She Wore’ Portrait of a Lady
Oil on canvas laid down on panel 91.5 x 71
Exhibited: Royal Academy 1854 (no 1084)
Signed and dated 1854
Newenham is an exceptionally rare Cork artist, who, rather unfairly, has escaped critical attention. In the bicentenary of his birth it seems
appropriate that he finally be given his just deserts as one of the remarkably talented group of artists to emerge from Cork in the nineteenthcentury. Although he is not mentioned in standard works such as Crookshank and Glin’s Ireland’s Painters, he is noted in Peter Murray’s
history of Cork art as one of the immensely talented artistic family whose members also included Robert O’Callaghan Newenham, the
landscape painter and William Newenham of Coolmore, county Cork who combined his role as Superintendent General of Barracks with
an active career as a topographical artist. According to Strickland, Frederick Newenham was born in Cork in 1807. Like Daniel Maclise and
James Barry he made his name in London where ‘he achieved some success, becoming a fashionable painter of ladies’ portraits’. However
he also painted history and anecdotal pictures which he exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1838 to 1855. He died on the 21 March 1859.
Newenham’s technical ability is clearly apparent in this scintillating work which takes its subject from Moore’s Melodies, which, of course,
also inspired Maclise, Newenham’s elder by one year.
Rich and rare were the gems she wore
And a bright gold ring on her wand she bore
But oh! Her beauty was far beyond
Her sparkling gems, or snow white wand.
An allegory of ‘Erin’s honour and Erin’s pride’, it tells the story of a young lady of great beauty’ who ‘adorned with jewels and costly
dress, undertook a journey alone, from one end of [Ireland] to another, but ‘such an impression had the laws and government of [King
Brien] made on the minds of all the people, that no attempt was made upon her honour, nor was she robbed of her clothes of jewels’.
Newenham’s picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1854 under the title ‘Rich and rare were the gems she wore’. It shows the
young lady preparing for her journey, her jewel box on the table and her looking glass to the left – rather recalling The Lady of Shallot,
beloved of contemporary pre-Raphaelite artists. An important work by a rare and under-appreciated Irish artist, illustrating an Irish subject,
it invites further study on this forgotten contemporary of Maclise. In the bicentenary of the artist’s birth, following last year’s bicentenaries
of the birth of Maclise and the death of Barry it again demonstrates the vitality of the Cork school.
27
31. DENNIS MALONE CARTER, c. 1819-1881
‘Departure for the New World’
Oil on canvas 87 x 120
Signed and dated 1861
Provenance: Kennedy Galleries Inc. New York
Painted by the Irish-born artist Dennis Malone Carter, these two canvases are a significant re-discovery in the history of nineteenth century
European and American painting. Depicting what appears to be the emigration of an entire village from Britain or Ireland to America, the
paintings show scenes from both sides of the Atlantic: the departure from the Old World, and the arrival at the New. In his choice of subject
matter, Carter, who lived most of his life in New York City, was often inspired by literature, and it may well be that these two paintings
illustrate scenes from a novel of the period. Carter was also influenced by Old Master paintings, known by him through prints, and the
influence of Raphael, among other artists, is evident in his depiction of figures. The settings are generalized, and do not depict specific
locations. The first painting is set in a rural village, perhaps in Ireland, while the second scene takes place in the forests of the New World,
where the travellers are attacked by native Americans, armed with bow and arrow. In the first painting, a woman, at the centre of the
composition, raises her hand as if revealing a divine truth to her husband, who stands beside her. Two children cling to their parents, the
eldest, a boy, listening with interest. Both parents and children are well-dressed and wear shoes; and while they stand in a muddy clearing
near a rustic village, they appear to be relatively well-off. Judging by the costume, the scene is set around 1840. In the background, other
members of the group set off across a small bridge in the direction of the sailing ship resting at anchor. An elderly woman wearing a red
cloak is assisted by a grey-haired man, accompanied by a woman with a lace-work shawl and straw bonnet. In all his paintings, Carter
idealized his subject matter, and so while details of costume and architecture in this work may be more germaine to English rural life, the
artist may well have intended to depict a scene in Ireland. This is borne out perhaps by the ruins of a tower on a hill, visible in the distance,
and the emigrant ship at anchor, in the bay beyond. In the second painting, the group of travelers, armed with muskets, are attacked in
a dense forest. The log cabin represents a sanctuary of sorts, and the young boy points to the front door. Hiding behind trees, and firing
arrows at the travellers, a small war party, perhaps of Iroquois, or one of the many other local tribes displaced by the arrival of European
settlers.
Although it is generally agreed that Carter was born in Ireland, the dates of his birth are less certain, and are variously given as 1818, 1820
and 1827. According to US 1880 Federal Census, one Dennis Carter, artist, living in New York, was aged 61, and had been born in Ireland
c. 1819. His English-born spouse’s name was Jane, and she was aged 45. They had one daughter Agnes, aged 20. According to Mantle
Fielding’s Dictionary of American Artists, in 1839 Carter and his parents had emigrated to America. Except for a brief residence in New
Orleans in 1845 and 1846, he seems to have spent the rest of his life in New York City, where, between the years 1848 and 1882 he exhibited
frequently at the National Academy of Design. During his forty-year career as an artist, Carter also exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy
of Art, the American Art Union, the Boston Athenaeum, and in 1857, at the Washington Art Association. He was a founder member, in 1858,
of the Artists’ Fund Society, an organisation which sought raise the status of American artists, partly by lobbying for tariffs on imported
European works of art. Carter painted mainly genre, still-life, portrait and religious paintings, although an entry for him in Dorothy
Brewington’s Dictionary of Marine Artists (Peabody Museum of Salem 1982) suggests he also did marine views. Fielding records his painting
Washington’s Reception (to Alexander Hamilton after his marriage to the daughter of General Schuyler) as well as numerous portraits. In the
28
32. DENNIS MALONE CARTER, c. 1819-1881
‘Arrival at the New World’
Oil on canvas 86.5 x 118
Signed and dated 1860
Provenance: Kennedy Galleries Inc. New York
Fraunces Tavern Museum, at Pearl Street in New York, there is a dramatic battlefield scene from the American War of Independence in 1777,
Molly Pitcher and the Battle of Monmouth. This dramatic canvas was painted by Carter in 1854, and depicts the heroic wife of an infantryman
who brought water to the troops, to cool their red-hot cannon, while the battle raged. Another female hero of American wars - in this case
the Civil War - an elderly woman named Barbara Frietchie, was depicted by Carter in the act of defying “Stonewall” Jackson’s Confederate
troops, waving the stars and stripes as they passed through the town of Frederick, Maryland. an event celebrated in John Greenleaf
Whittier’s poem Barbara Frietchie. The painting is now in Layfayette College at Easton, Pennsylvania, In 1856, Carter commemorated the
1815 Battle of New Orleans in another historical painting, while in the Naval Historical Foundation in Washington DC, there is a canvas
measuring 43” x 59” of Decatur Boarding the Tripolitan Gunboat, a vivid depiction of Lieutenant Stephen Decatur in mortal combat with the
captain of the gunboat, during an action which occurred during the U.S. Navy bombardment of Tripoli, on the 3rd August 1804.
Between 1861 and 1882, according to National Academy of Design records, Carter lived, or at least had his studio, at a wide variety of
addresses in Manhattan. In 1861 he exhibited at the Academy several works, including A Bunch of Strawberry Apples, Fruit and An Infant,
giving his address as 694 Broadway. The following year, when he sent in two works, St. Michael and Satan contending for the body of Moses and
Mercy’s Dream, he had moved to number 749 on the same street, remaining there until 1867. In that year, he showed The Angel appearing to
the Shepherds and Lincoln’s Drive Through Richmond, a vivid depiction of the war-torn city. In 1868, he sent another religious painting, Come
Ye Blessed to my Father, to the Academy, from 35 Union Square, where he stayed for about two years. The following year he was represented
by a portrait, and in 1870, by five paintings: Grapes, Innocence, Making a Dress for Dolly, The May Queen and Apples. In 1871 he showed The
Comforter and two years later Protecting Angel and The Bather. He also exhibited that year Grapes, which may have been a second attempt to
find a buyer for a painting first shown in 1870. A coastal scene from Rhode Island, Looking Seawards from the Rocks at Newport, was shown
in 1874, along with a portrait and a painting (based, no doubt, on Thomas Moore’s song) The Last Rose of Summer. In 1875 Carter showed
The Peri, again probably based on Tom Moore’s poem “Paradise and the Peri” in Lalla-Rookh. Carter was perhaps inspired by Tenniel’s
illustrations in the 1861 edition, in which the fairy gains entry to heaven by giving the tear of an old man as a gift to the angel. He also
showed that year two other works, The Story and The Coming of Our Lord, During these years, Carter gave his address as 40 East 23rd St.,
before moving in 1876 to 104 East 24th St., the year in which he send just one painting to the Academy, La Belle, priced at $300. In 1879,
living at 38 West 24th St., he exhibited A Brown Study, and the following year, priced at $150, A Summer Dream. By 1881, when he showed
just one painting, Sunday Morning, Carter was living at 135 East 17th St. This was to be his last address, as he died on 6th July that year, and
was represented posthumously at the 1882 Academy of Design exhibition by one painting, Una and the Lion.
Peter Murray
[Maria Taylor The National Academy of Design Exhibition Record 1861-1900 (Kennedy Galleries, New York NY 1973) p. 143;
New York Historical Society Dictionary of Artists in America 1564-1860; American Art Review, II (1881), 175; New York Daily Tribune July 9 1881; Mantle Fielding Dictionary of American Artists]
29
52. HOWARD HELMICK R.B.A. 1845-1907
‘Minding Dinner’
Oil on wood 53 x 42.5
Signed and dated 1873 also inscribed on
reverse
Howard Helmick was an accomplished
American genre and figure painter, who
exhibited his work at the best English galleries.
He was born in Zanesville, Ohio (1845-1907)
and it may have been his rural, farming
background that led him to his favourite subject
matter, that of Irish farming families. His socio
realist approach to Irish genre painting, and
the fact that he was an outsider, sharpened
his observations of Irish rural life, which
often incorporated sympathetic satire and
humour. Trained in Paris under the guidance
of Cabanel, most of his early works depict the
French peasantry, thereafter he began painting
in Ireland, from about 1872 onwards. Painting
mainly in oils, he migrated between various
studios in London and Ireland. His Irish work
can sometimes be linked to his studio close to
the centre of Galway city, or his southern base in
Kinsale, on the coast of county Cork. Admiringly
referred to as ‘the American Wilkie’ by one of
his contemporaries, he was both talented and
prolific.1
These three oil paintings share similar
characteristics to his other Irish figure
paintings and narrative scenes, with their close
observation of traditional clothing and objects.
The title ‘Minding Dinner’ refers to the three legged pot, shown on the far right suspended from a simple crook. The crook is a wrought
iron strap linked into a vertical rod, allowing the pot to be raised or lowered over the open turf fire. This type of round-bellied, cast-iron
pot was the most widely used cooking vessel in farmhouses, until well into the twentieth century. It came in a range of sizes, and was used
to boil water for washing and cleaning, as well as for stewing meat or boiling potatoes. The three tiny legs helped it stand firmly on an
uneven floor, despite its rounded base. Two projecting lugs on either side of its finely tapered rim, allowed for a pair of adjustable pot hooks
to suspend it from the crook. It was generally the work of two women to lift such a full pot off the crook and away from the fire to strain
the potatoes. This was done either through a piece of sacking wrapped around the top, or into an open flat basket variously called a sciob
or skib, the water being saved in a shallow keeler. The family gathered around and ate potatoes with their fingers, directly from this skib,
which was placed on top of the pot itself.2 Flavouring or ‘kitchen’ was provided by a container of buttermilk, or maybe some salt, a salt
herring or a piece of butter, which acted as a dip in the centre of the basket. This communal tradition survived in many parts of Ireland well
into the twentieth century, and was the preferred alternative to the kitchen table. Those households fortunate enough to own a horizontal
crane, could swing the boiling pot gently away from the fireplace, and strain it while still attached to the crook, which was far safer and
easier.
Helmick’s small girl watches carefully as the pot gradually heats up, to ensure that it doesn’t boil over and put out the fire. She may be
required to add more turf if the fire dies down, and perhaps to keep any younger siblings from getting dangerously close. Her red skirt or
petticoat was a colour that was typically used in the west of Ireland, and the homespun wool would have been dyed using the roots of the
Common Madder plant (Rubia tinctorum). She has an overskirt or apron which has been tucked up at the front, falling lower behind. This
style was fashionable among women at that time, echoing what her mother would have worn, including details like the brightly patterned
shawl around her shoulders, which doubled as a head scarf. Women and children commonly went barefoot, except perhaps when they
arrived at Mass, or on special occasions.
The floors of such houses were often of beaten earth, usually with a slight delineation around the hearth itself, which here is slightly raised.
Others had circles or rectangles of pebbles close to the fireplace, allowing the area to be swept clean, sometimes with a goose-wing as a
brush. In some houses a horse’s skull was buried beneath the front of the hearth, providing resonance for dancing feet. The artist bathes
the girl in a pool of light as she leans back against the whitewashed wall and the hob seat beneath the capacious chimney canopy. The
seriousness of her task and her expression of concentration make her look older than her years, but farmers’ children were often put to
work young.
30
The second canvas shows an even younger girl, this time looking directly at us, as if to gauge a response to her tears. There is a suggestion
that she has been admonished by being sent outside, which was a common punishment for wayward children. Helmick also tackled
the subject of discipline in another of his paintings, ‘The Schoolmaster’s Moment of Leisure’ (published as an engraving in 1888) which
shows a boy humiliated by wearing a dunce’s cap.3 Here the daylight and the closed green door to the left add to that suggestion that the
scene is out of doors, as does the round woven potato skib, which leans against the wall on the right. Potato skibs and other baskets were
customarily washed then left outside to dry in the sun and the wind, and they can also be seen in early photographs hanging from the
eaves, or leaning against the front wall in this way. Helmick has chosen to paint an especially difficult pose here, with the girl’s forearm
foreshortened, and her fingers curled.
41. HOWARD HELMICK R.B.A. 1845-1907
‘A Little Girl’
Oil on canvas 50.7 x 38
Signed and dated 1875
75. HOWARD HELMICK R.B.A. 1845-1907
‘A Bit of Blue’
Oil on wood 50.8 x 40
Signed and dated 1882
Provenance: A.F. Armstrong, Fine Art Consultant, Glasgow
In contrast with his paintings of farmhouse interiors, Helmick sometimes depicted Catholic priests, in comfortable surroundings and often
with fine items of furniture similar to the chair, press and table shown here. These men are apparently discussing and examining a tall blue
and white vase, in a room well decorated by plates hung on the wall, and a corner cabinet with its door ajar displaying more ceramics. The
man on the right, with his slightly theatrical pose, tilts the vase carefully as he talks to his companion who watches on the left. The drapes
beneath suggest that the vase may just have been unwrapped from a length of cloth, upon which it rests. The buyer and seller pose; passive
and active, is reminiscent of the way Turkish carpet sellers sit their customers down and entertain them while they extol the virtues of their
wares. Helmick’s enthusiasm for painting the shapes and glazes of ceramics can be seen in his other paintings such as ‘The Dispensary
Doctor, West of Ireland’ (exhibited Royal Academy, 1883)4 and two years before this one ‘The China Hunter’ (shown at the RSBA in 1880).
It also echoes the much earlier Dutch genre painters, whose pictures often included such incidental vignettes, and whose work was an
important precursor and influence on Irish genre painting.
Claudia Kinmonth
1
C. Kinmonth, Irish Rural Interiors in Art (Yale University Press, 2006), pp.63-65.
2
C.Kinmonth, Irish Country Furniture 1700-1950 (Yale University Press, 1993), pp.178-9.
3
C, Kinmonth, Irish Rural Interiors…, fig. 246. engraved illustration in The Magazine of Art , vol.II (New York, 1888).
4
A. Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts, Dictionary of Contributors…1769-1904, vol. II (Kingsmead, 1970), p.63. And reproduced in Kinmonth, Irish Rural Interiors…, pp.236, 241-2.
31
5. Matthew William Peters R.A. 1741-1814
‘Portrait of a Lady’
Oil on board 26.5 x 21.5
Literature:
Matthew William Peters R.A.
His Life and Works
by Lady Victoria Manners
London, Published by the Connoisseur, 35.39,
Maddox Street, W. 1913
Colourplate page 1.
49. Matthew William Peters R.A. 1741-1814
‘Much Ado about Nothing, Act III, Scene I. Hero, Ursula and
Beatrice’
Watercolour on paper 56 x 44
Signed
This original watercolour forms the basis for the stipple
engraving ‘Much Ado about Nothing’ - Beatrice Listening
engraved by Peter Simon, published June 4th 1790, by John and
Josiah Boydell at the Shakespeare Gallery, Pall Mall and at No.90
Cheapside.
Literature: Matthew William Peters R.A.
His Life and Works
by Lady Victoria Manners
London, Published by the Connoisseur, 35.39,
Maddox Street, W. 1913
Born on the Isle of Wight to Irish parents in 1741, Matthew William Peters grew up in Dublin, where he trained under Robert West at the
Dublin Society Schools. He had moved to London by 1759, when he received a prize from the Society of Artists. on the recommendation
of the 2nd Earl of Lanesborough, Peters was awarded a scholarship to study in Italy by the Dublin Society. he duly spent two years in
Florence before returning to Dublin and, in turn, London, where he was elected a Member of the Society of Artists in 1765. He exhibited at
the Society of Artists, the Royal Academy and elsewhere and attracted a number of significant patrons, most notably Charles Manners, 4th
Duke of Rutland. A Second recorded trip to Italy in 1771 took him to Florence, Venice, Parma and Perugia. En route back to London, Peters
stopped in Paris, a city he would return to for some months in 1782. Having been ordained an Anglican minister in 1779, he was appointed
chaplain to the Royal Academy (of which he was a full member) in 1784, and subsequently chaplain to the Prince of Wales. His pictures
became more didactic and religious in nature, a decision that elicited scorn from certain parties who believed his earlier artistic sensibilities
to have been at odds with his decision to take holy orders. In 1790, Peters married Margaret Susannah Knowsley, a clergyman’s daughter,
who gave birth to their first son the following year. From 1800, Peters served as vicar in a small Oxfordshire town and died in 1814 in
Brasted, Kent.
32
46.
47.
46 & 47. John E Bosanquet fl. 1851-1867
‘Lota Park, Glanmire, Co. Cork, Residence of Edward Burke Esq.’
Watercolours on paper 38 x 56 (pair)
Signed, inscribed and dated 1867 on reverse, with original label of R.S.W. Clarke, Framers 40-41, Grand Parade, Cork
A two storey house erected for John Power in 1801 to the designs of an unknown architect said to have cost not less than £4000. The wings
containing a ballroom and library added later.
Bosanquet painted numerous views and house portraits in the Cork area. He exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1854 and 1861
and was represented at the National Exhibition of Arts in Cork in 1852 and at the Limerick Art Exhibition in 1858.
With the recent discovery of these dated works by Bosanquet we can now with certainty extend his flourished dates of 1851-1863 to 1867.
The Limerick Museum has an example of his work.
33
26. Samuel Godbold
37. James Francis Danby
34
10. John Henry Campbell
39. Edwin Hayes
35
An Important Group of Paintings by William Sadler II c. 1782-1839
Despite several attempts at critical reassessment, William Sadler has never been given his full due as an artist. The sheer variety of his
output, in a period of restrictive artistic specialisation is at times dazzling. The fine group of works assembled here gives an indication of his
ambition and scope. From the drama of classical myth to the mundanity of watching shipping in Dublin bay, Sadler explores life in all its
manifestations, yet retains throughout his gently ironic, sometimes quirky and always idiosyncratic vision. Sadler was born in about 1782,
his father, also William was an artist. He contributed to various Dublin exhibitions, including the Royal Hibernian Academy from 1809 to
1833. In 1838 the auctioneer C. Bennett sold the ‘entire of last year’s paintings’ which included an Eruption of Mount Vesuvius, Burning of
the Royal Exchange, Wreck of the Killarney and Burning of the Arcade in College Green. He died at home in Manders Buildings, Ranelagh the
following year. The discovery of Sadler’s impressively large and effective Battle of Waterloo has called for a rethink of his oeuvre, as often
lesser paintings by his family have been misattributed to him.
Sadler’s view of the Irish landscape was resolutely of the post-Union decades in which he lived. His was a middle-class, and peculiarly
Irish, vision, quite different from the lofty Burekean sublime of George Barret, the essentially Englishness of William Ashford or the
aristocratic idylls of Thomas Roberts while at the same time, as William Laffan has noted, ‘Sadler acts as an important link between the
eighteenth-century tradition of landscape and the romanticism, of his pupil James Arthur O’Connor’. He painted the Dublin of the early
nineteenth century with great affection and a journalist’s eye for detail and incident. Although he also painted in Killarney, and Westmeath,
Dublin and its surroundings was the milieu in which he felt most at home. He was to document his city and its suburbs in a series of
carefully observed works which have a great sense of immediacy and truth.
35. WILLIAM SADLER II c. 1782-1839
‘Shipping off the Coast with a Castle’
Oil on panel 21.5 x 28
Provenance: W
illiam Dillon, Hibernian Antiques,
Private Collection, Dublin
Catalogue 35 shows a castle rather resembling that at Bullock Harbour in County Dublin with shipping in stormy seas. One of the boats
with sails up comes perilously close to the rocks, while masts appearing to the immediate right of the castle, suggest that another is soon to
find the safety of the harbour. A fine and vigorous work, it is typical of the directness of Sadler’s reportage.
Wanda Ryan-Smolin, ‘William Sadler’s Views of Killua Castle, Co. Westmeath in Irish Arts Review Yearbook, vol. XII, 1996, 66-70; William Laffan, ‘The Battle of Waterloo’, in A Crookshank,
the Knight of Glin and William Laffan, Masterpieces by Irish Artists, 1660-1860 (London 1999) 52-60 and Brendan Rooney, Sadler’s Wall (Maryland 2004).
William Laffan, ‘William Sadler’, in William Laffan (ed.), The Sublime and the Beautiful, Irish Art 1700-1830 (Pyms Gallery, London 2001) p. 141.
36
36. WILLIAM SADLER II c. 1782-1839
‘Figures Watching Shipping by the South Wall in Dublin’
Oil on panel 27.5 x 39
Provenance: Trinity Boat Club
William Dillon, Hibernian Antiques
Private Collection, Dublin
The weather has abated in a further picture (Catalogue 36) where, closer in to the city, a group of men look out onto the shipping of Dublin
Bay. The site is somewhere on the South Wall, scene of so many of Sadler’s works. Here his scale his unusually large, his rendering rather
more monumental than usual. Brendan Rooney has recently analysed Sadler’s fondness for the area.
Sadler surely shared his interest in and affection for the
South Wall with many Dubliners. The South Wall reached
out to embrace its own on their return from the sea, but also
welcomed visitors from abroad….Perhaps observing the
traffic that passed along the South Wall satisfied the artist’s
latent wanderlust…His fascination with the South Wall was
manifest not just in his revisiting of the theme, but also in the
variety between the pictures. Though the setting, or the stage,
remained the same, the dramatis personae changed from
image to image – a hawker replaced a soldier, a carriage a cart,
a fisherman a figure with a telescope.
Dr Rooney notes that although there is no evidence that Sadler
ever travelled outside Ireland, this did not limit the ambition of
his chosen subject matter. This is clearly apparent in two further
works, an elegant capriccio view (catalogue 13) and a subject piece
of unusual drama and classical inspiration (catalogue 34).
13. WILLIAM SADLER II c. 1782-1839
‘A Capriccio, Extensive Coastal Landscape with Ruins and Figures’
Oil on panel 45.5 x 66.5
The Capriccio (catalogue 13) replaces the actuality of Dublin Bay with the dreamlike qualities associated with the classical past. The dull
light of Dublin is swapped for the luminous sun that Italy had conjured up for generations of artists, even those, or perhaps especially
those, who had never visited. The crisp application of paint, combined with the cleverly demarcated planes of perspective, as the distance
recedes makes for a strangely haunting work with the ruins giving a sense of transience, paradoxically combined with timelessness.
Rooney, Sadler’s Wall, p. 6.
37
34. WILLIAM SADLER II c. 1782-1839
‘Dido and Aeneas’
Oil on panel 38 x 53.5 cms
Unusually for Sadler, Catalogue 34 takes its
inspiration from classical literature, specifically
Book 2 of Virgil’s Aeneid. Fleeing Troy, Aeneas is
given refuge in Carthage. While out hunting with
Queen Dido, a storm erupts, Dido and Aeneas take
refuge and, inevitably, consummate the love that
had been developing between them. Dido takes
this as a sign of marriage, pious Aeneas however
pursues his destiny to found Rome and sails away
from Carthage. Seeing the sails in the distance,
Dido kills herself. Sadler depicts the moment
of the storm with Carthage in the distance (the
dome of Dido’s palace perhaps recalling Claude’s
pictures of the subject). Aeneas indicates with a
gesture of his hand a suitable spot to shelter from
the rain. It is a powerfully dramatic history picture of a type extremely rare in Irish art. Typically, the action is clearly delineated, as has been
noted ‘even [Sadler’s] attempts at grandeur, whether natural, architectural or episodic possess a simplicity that adds to their authenticity.’
33. WILLIAM SADLER II c. 1782-1839
‘A Church Interior’
Oil on panel 39 x 27.5
Signed and dated 1812
The significance of the final painting in this selection
of works by Sadler (catalogue 33) has been noted
by William Laffan and it is discussed by Anne
Crookshank and the Knight of Glin in Ireland’s
Painters. It is the exception to the rule that Sadler
never signs his work. This, and the sheer quality of
the work, give in unusual art historical significance.
The picture shows Sadler’s mastery of perspective,
and is very much in the tradition of Dutch artists
such as Saenredam. However, Sadler has given it
an Irish twist by introducing contemporary clerics
into the background. He signs the picture on one
of the flagstones of the church’s floor as if it is his
gravestone, a rather poignant memento mori. The
picture is dated 1812, relatively early in Sadler’s
career, and as a exceptionally rare signed work by
the artist is of great importance in establishing his
documented oeuvre which has sometimes been
clouded by the attribution to Sadler of works by sons,
William III and Rupert.
ibid., p. 8
William Laffan quoted in Anne Crookshank and the Knight of Glin, Ireland’s Painters, 1600-1940 (New Haven and London) p. 195.
38
An Important Group of Works by James Arthur O’Connor
James Arthur O’Connor is one of the best loved of all Irish artists, and the group of works assembled here gives a full account of his art. It is
particularly pleasing to publish for the first time a previously unknown, and particularly exquisite, work by the artist (catalogue 9).
11. JAMES ARTHUR O’CONNOR c. 1792-1841
‘Mountainous Landscape with Ruins of a Castle
and Figures on a Road’
Oil on canvas 56 x 66
Signed and dated 1826
The earliest of the group of paintings
Mountainous Landscape with Ruins of A Castle
and Figures on a Road (catalogue 11), is dated
1826. While a wholly characteristic example of his
art, it continues to show the lingering influence
of his master William Sadler. Three figures pause
on a road through the mountains, while at the
end of the path a further figure in red passes by
some ruins. The figures are deliberately dwarfed
in scale by the enormity of the mountains.
Travellers recur in O’Connor’s art in different
combinations, often, as here, shown accompanied
by a dog. The picture can be compared with In the
Vale of Glenmalure (private collection) of two years
later and it is likely that the scene shown is on the
Military Road in County Wicklow.
9. JAMES ARTHUR O’CONNOR c. 1792-1841
‘A Wooded Landscape with Figures on a Path’
Oil on canvas 45.5 x 61
Signed and dated 1828
A Wooded landscape with Figures on a Path
(catalogue 9) signed and dated 1828 is perhaps
one of the most quietly impressive works by
the artist to come on the market in recent years.
It is a fine example of what Hutchinson has
termed O’Connor ‘picturesque’ style of the late
1820s, characterised by an intense greenness of
foliage. There is a pleasing order and balance
to the composition, in particular the rendition of
the trees is extremely delicate. Two main clumps
make up the foreground, those on the left set
further back from the viewer. The recession into
the picture plane is more subtle and complicated
than the artist’s more frequent use of a single
vista. In contrast to the view into the distance at
the centre of the composition, the view to the left is blocked by a stone cottage where, in a charming vignette, a woman hangs out washing.
The handling of the foreground which a man and his dog mutely communicate is particularly fine, recalling the way O’Connor paints the
seashore in his somewhat earlier View of Irishtown (private collection). Slightly off centre, the eye is caught on the horizon by a group of
cottages. O’Connor had been living in London since 1822 but it seems likely that in 1828, the year that this picture was painted, he returned
to Ireland as there are pictures dated to that year of Wicklow, the Liffey, and Connemara. Clearly it was a busy year for the artist, he moved
to 8 Soho Square in London and sent pictures for exhibition to both the British Institution and the Royal Academy. This picture shows
O’Connor at the height of his powers and is a welcome addition to the cannon of his oeuvre.
John Hutchinson, James Arthur O’Connor, Exhibition Catalogue, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin 1985) p. 142
Ibid., p. 122
39
7. JAMES ARTHUR O’CONNOR c. 1792-1841
‘A View in the Glen of the Dargle’
Oil on canvas 35.5 x 45.5
Signed and dated 1832
Provenance: William Dillon, Hibernian Antiques,
Private Collection, Dublin
O’Connor was inspired throughout his life by the magical scenery
of the Dargle Valley. This landscape is dated 1832, towards the
beginning of his late period. In that year he had moved again,
taking a house at 38 Charing Cross Road, and though A View
in the Dargle was probably painted in London, it clearly recalls
the Wicklow landscape he knew so well. The distinctive crags of
the mountains are balanced by the bulk of the tree to the left. In
September of this year, O’Connor set off for Paris at the beginning
of a lengthy, if not wholly successful, continental journey.
8. JAMES ARTHUR O’CONNOR c. 1792-1841
‘An Oncoming Storm; with Windswept Trees’
Oil on board 15 x 20.3
Signed with initials and dated 1840
Provenance: W
illiam Dillon, Hibernian Antiques
Private Collection, Dublin
Signed and dated 1840, the composition is almost identical to a
picture of the previous year of which John Hutchinson has noted that
despite O’Connor’s ill health and weakening eyesight ‘he was still
capable…of good painting’. Hutchinson further notes of the 1839
variant that it is ‘much lighter in tone than his romantic landscapes of
the early 1830s’.
12. JAMES ARTHUR O’CONNOR c. 1792-1841
‘Figures in a Landscape by a Ruined Building’
Sepia wash on paper 10.2 x 14.6
Signed with initials
The final work in this selection of pictures by James Arthur is one
of his extremely rare drawings. John Hutchinson has noted that
‘O’Connor’s drawings are pleasing, for they have something of
the simplicity and stillness that characterize his early paintings’.10
This is a fine, signed example which was presumably preparatory
to an oil painting, though this had yet to be identified. It is much
freer than drawings such as Ben Grugaan, County Mayo (British
Museum) in the sheets of the 1822 sketchbook (National Gallery of
Ireland) with a fluid, yet controlled, use of wash.
Ibid., cat 85,
Anne Crookshank and the Knight of Glin, The Watercolours of Ireland, (London 1994) p. 157.
10
Hutchinson, O’Connor, p. 130
40
64.
65.
Harry Phelan Gibb 1870-1948
64. ‘Woodland Glade with Buildings’
Oil on canvas 50.7 x 76
65. ‘Coastal Scene’
Oil on canvas 51 x 76
Signed
Phelan Gibb was of Irish descent, his father being a painter. He studied Art in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and adopted his father’s 19th Century
style of painting.
He later travelled to Paris, Antwerp and Munich, settling in Paris where he lived for many years developing a French Impressionist style of
painting with a vibrant palette. He was a friend of Matisse and later Gertrude Stein who purchased one of his paintings.
He exhibited widely including The Royal Hibernian Academy and the Royal Scottish Academy.
41
Measurements in centimetres, height precedes width.
Gallery I
NATHANIEL HONE R.A. 1718-1784
1.
‘Self Portrait’
Illustration and text on page 7
William Sadler II c.1782-1839
13.
‘A Capriccio, Extensive Coastal Landscape with Ruins and
Figures’
Illustration and text on page 37
Horace Hone A.R.A. 1754-1825
14.
‘Portrait of James Currie, M.S. F.R.S.’
Illustration and text on page 10
NATHANIEL HONE R.A. 1718-1784
2.
‘Portrait of John Gray’
Illustration and text on page 9
Hugh Douglas Hamilton 1740-1808
3.
‘Portrait of the Hon. John Mason’
Illustration and text on page 11
Samuel towgood roch 1757-1847
4.
‘The Interior of a Shop’
Illustration and text on page 13
Matthew william peters R.A. 1741-1814
5.
‘Portrait of a Lady’
Illustration and text on page 32
SIR George hayter P.R.A. 1792-1871
6.
‘Portrait of The Right Hon. Sir Frederick Shaw’
Illustration and text on page 12
James arthur o’connor c.1792-1841
7.
‘View in the Glen of the Dargle’
Illustration and text on page 40
james arthur o’connor c.1792-1841
8.
‘An Oncoming Storm; Windswept Trees’
Illustration and text on page 40
james arthur o’connor c.1792-1841
9.
‘A Wooded Landscape, with Figures on a Path’
Illustration and text on page 39
John henry campbell c.1755-1828
10.
‘Arklow Bridge, Co. Wicklow, Taken up the River’
Watercolour on paper 17.8 x 24.2
Signed and inscribed
Illustrated page 35
james arthur o’connor c.1792-1841
11.
‘Mountainous Landscape with Ruins of a Castle’
Illustration and text on page 39
james arthur o’connor c.1792-1841
12.
‘Figures in a Landscape by a Ruined Building’
Illustration and text on page 40
42
Attributed to
FREDERICK FRITH fl. 1809-1841
15.
‘Portrait of a Young Woman’
Silhouette heightened with gold on card
10.3 x 8.4
Illustrated above
william h. bartlett 1858-1932
16.
‘His Last Work’
Illustration and text on pages 4 & 5
Illustrated front cover and detail inside front cover
Adam Buck 1759-1833
17.
‘Portrait of a Young Gentleman of the Villiers Family’
Illustration and text on page 12
Adam Buck 1759-1833
18.
‘Portrait of Augustus Villiers’
Illustration and text on page 12
William Teulon blandford fletcher 1858-1936
19.
‘The Morning of the Pardon, First Arrivals’
Illustration and text on pages 16 and 17
Sir john lavery r.a. r.s.a. r.h.a. 1856-1941
20.
‘The Monk’
Illustration and text on pages 18 and 19
Eugene laurent vail 1857-1934
21.
‘Leoinie’ Etaples, c.1887
Illustration and text on pages 20 and 21
Adolphe peterelle 1874-1947
22.
‘Breton Woman with Cross’
Illustration and text on page 22
Robert anderson r.s.a. 1842-1885
23.
‘Wanderers, Brittany’
Illustration and text on page 23
Louis weldEn hawkins 1849-1910
24.
‘Fisherfolk Looking Out to Sea’
Illustration and text on pages 24 and 25
Aloysius O’kelly 1853-c.1941
25.
‘Tavern Interior’
Illustration and text on page 26
Gallery II
Samuel barry godbold fl. 1842-1875
Claude Hayes R.I. 1852-1922
26.
28.
‘Change of Pasture’
Oil on canvas 102 x 127
Signed also signed and inscribed
on reverse
‘The Forester’s Daughter, Killarney’
Oil on canvas 66 x 51
Signed and dated 1860 also signed
and inscribed on original label verso
Exhibited: Royal Dublin Society Exhibition
of the Fine Arts 1861, The New Hall,
Kildare Street, Dublin,
Catalogue Number 11 page 65 as
“An Irish Girl” original labels on reverse.
Landscape, genre and miniature painter. Frequent exhibitor
at the Royal Academy, London, The British Institution and
Suffolk Street, many of them of Irish subjects
Illustrated on page 34
Exhibited: Royal Academy, London 1895
Number 307
Illustrated above
nathaniel hone R.A. 1718-1784
29.
‘The Spartan Boy’
Illustration and text on pages 8 and 9
Frederick Newenham 1807-1859
30.
‘Rich and Rare were the Gems she wore’
Illustration and text on page 27
Dennis malone carter c. 1819-1881
31.
‘Departure for the New World’
Illustration and text on page 28
Dennis malone carter c. 1819-1881
32.
‘Arrival at the New World’
Illustration and text on page 29
William Sadler II c. 1782-1839
Charles Grey R.H.A. c.1808-1892
27
‘The Return from Deer Stalking’
Oil on canvas 70.5 x 91.5
Signed and dated 1885
Charles Grey commenced his career as a Dublin portrait
painter, exhibiting at the RHA from 1837. His subjects
included William Carlton, Daniel O’Connell (RHA 1843),
George Petrie and John Hogan, the sculptor. In later life,
becoming friendly with Lord Powerscourt, whose portrait he
had painted, Grey concentrated on landscape subjects, very
often with a sporting or Highland theme, thereby becoming
one of Ireland’s few sporting artists. Several of Charles Grey’s
children followed their father’s profession, notably Alfred
and Gregor.
33.
‘A Church Interior’
llustration and text on page 38
William Sadler II c. 1782-1839
34.
‘Dido and Aeneas’
Illustration and text on page 38
William Sadler II c. 1782-1839
35.
‘Shipping Off the Coast with a Castle’’
Illustration and text on page 36
Illustrated above
43
William Sadler II c. 1782-1839
36.
‘Figures watching shipping by the South Wall in Dublin’
Illustration and text on page 37
James francis danby 1816-1875
37.
‘Sunset, Mont Orgueil, Jersey’
Oil on canvas 45.5 x 76.5
Signed
Mont Orgueil, Jersey: Overlooking the scenic harbour of
Gorey in Jersey, Mont Orgueil was built in the early 13th
century following the division of the Duchy of Normandy in
1204. It became the island’s primary defence against French
invasion until the end of the 16th century after which it acted
variously as a prison, garrison and latterly, a scenic ruin, more
recently, the castle has been extensively restored and is now a
museum.
Illustrated on page 34
40. Henry Gillard Glindoni
Howard helmick R.B.A 1845-190740.
41. ‘A Little Girl’
Illustration and text on page 31
Charles Allen Duval 1808-1872
42.
‘The Orange Girl’
Oil on board 39.5 x 33.5
Matthew Kendrick R.H.A. c.1797-1874
Signed and dated 1858 also signed and inscribed on reverse
38.
‘Ireland’s Eye and Lambay from Balscadden Bay, Howth’
Oil on canvas 17.5 x 36
Signed and dated 1866
Exhibited: Royal Hibernian Academy
1867 Number 299
Provenance:William Dillon, Hibernian Antiques
Private Collection, Dublin
Born in Ireland, Duval commenced exhibiting at the RHA
in 1831 from his address at 42 Dawson St, Dublin. He later
moved to Manchester and exhibited widely, showing many
works at the Royal Academy. he also produced engravings
with considerable success. A portrait of Dalton, published in
the Northern Ireland Review of 1842, is recorded amongst
many other works. Benezit’s “Dictionary” mentions in particular a portrait of Daniel O’Connell, painted in 1838. This
must be the work exhibited at the Important Irish Exhibition
which was held in London in 1888.
Illustrated below
Illustrated above
Edwin Hayes R.H.A. R.I. 1820-1904
39.
‘North Wall Lighthouse’
Oil on board 25.5x35.5
Signed, also signed and inscribed on reverse
Exhibited: Royal Hibernian Academy 1846
Number 206
In this rare and unusual Dublin coastal view Hayes shows us
a very different coastline to that of today. To the right of the
North Wall Lighthouse we see Annesley Bridge with its five
arches over the Tolka River in the distance. Built in 1797 and
rebuilt in the last century it was the first bridge over the Tolka
River before Ballybough futher inland.
Illustrated on page 35
Gallery III (downstairs)
Henry Gillard Glindoni R.B.A. A.R.W.S. 1852-1913
40.
‘The Prescription’
Oil on canvas 40.7 x 30.5
Signed
Exhibited: Possibly Royal Academy, London
1890 Number 1036
Illustrated top right
44
Edwin Hayes R.H.A. R.I. 1820-1904
43. ‘Sunset off Portsmouth’
Watercolour on paper 20.5 x 27.7
Signed, also inscribed on reverse
Illustrated on page 45
Thomas Walmsley 1763-1806
51.
‘View on the River Flesk in the Co. Kerry, Ireland’
Gouache on paper 39x 50
Inscribed with title verso
This original gouache forms the basis for the coloured
aquatint engraved by F. Jukes. Published January 1st 1800 by
T. Walmsley, Argyle St. Bath and F. Jukes, Howland.
Illustrated on page 14
Howard Helmick R.B.A. 1845-1907
43. Edwin Hayes
George Barret R.A. 1732-1784
52.
‘Minding Dinner’
Illustration and text on page 30
Tom Carr 1909-1999
53.
‘Spring Corn’
Watercolour on paper 37.5 x 27.5
Signed
44.
‘Hauling Timber Through A Wood’
Gouache and gum arabic on paper 46 x 62.5
Provenance: Tom Caldwell Galleries June 1987
Illustrated on page 15
Illustrated below
George Barret Jnr. O.W.S. 1767-1842
45.
‘An Arcadian Landscape with Figures’
Pencil and watercolour
heightened with white on paper 45 x 75.5
Illustrated on page 15
John E. Bosanquet fl. 1851-1867
46/47. ‘Lota Park, Glanmire Co. Cork’
Watercolours on paper 38 x 56
(A Pair)
Illustrations and text on page 33
Michael Angelo Hayes R.H.A. 1820-1877
48.
‘Fashionable Equestrian Group at the Palace
Gate of Dublin Castle’
Illustration and text on page 6
Alfred Grey R.H.A. 1845-1926
54.
‘Landscape with Cattle’
Matthew William Peters R.A. 1741-1814
Oil on canvas 33 x 46.5
Signed
49.
‘Much Ado About Nothing’ Act III Scene I Hero, Ursula and
Beatrice’
Illustrated below
Illustration and text on page 32
Thomas Walmsley 1763-1806
50.
‘Gobray Falls’
Gouache on paper 47.5 x 67.5
This original gouache forms the basis for the coloured
aquatint engraving, published by Jukes and Sarjent London,
1808
Illustrated on page 14
45
Robert Richard Scanlan fl. 1826-76
57.
‘Boy with Dogs’
Watercolour on paper 31 x 22.5
Inscribed verso “Sketch by Mr. Scanlan, artist”
Illustrated bottom left
Samuel Spode mid 19th Century
55.
‘A Dog and Pony in a Landscape’
Oil on canvas 71.5 x 91.5
Signed
Illustrated above
Andrew Nichol R.H.A. 1804-1866
58.
‘Belfast from Knockbreda Old Church’
Watercolour on paper 35 x 26
Signed
Illustrated above
Sidney Goodwin 1867-1944
56.
‘After The Days Toil’
Watercolour on paper 30 x 47
Signed, also signed, inscribed with address
‘1, St. Mary’s Terrace, Chapelizod, Dublin’
Exhibited: Royal Hibernian Academy 1921
Number 218
Illustrated above
Robert Richard Scanlan fl. 1836-76
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57. Robert Richard ScanlaN
59.
‘Old Men in Conversation’
Pencil and sepia wash on paper 27.5 x 18.5
Inscribed verso “Original Sketch by Mr. Scanlan, Artist”
Illustrated above
John Nixon c. 1750-1818
61.
‘I’m a Common Council Man etc’
Sepia wash on paper 15.7 x 12.5
Signed with initials dated 1780 and extensively inscribed
Illustrated bottom left
John Nixon c. 1750-1818
Nicholas Hely Hutchinson b. 1955
62.
‘Bravo Mi Lor, Encore’ London Tavern,
Anniversary St. Patrick’
60.
‘The Artist Painting a View From His Window‘
Gouache on canvas 105 x 67
Signed with initials
Pen, ink and wash on paper 17 x 12
Signed with initials, dated 1787 and inscribed
Illustrated above
Illustrated above
John Nixon c. 1750-1818
63.
‘Plaiskins, near The Giant’s Causeway’
Watercolour on paper 14.7 x 22.2
Inscribed
Provenance: The Bell Gallery, Belfast
Illustrated above
Harry Phelan Gibb 1870-1948
64. ‘Woodland Glade with Buildings’
Oil on canvas 50.7 x 76
Illustration and text on page 41
61. John Nixon
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Harry Phelan Gibb 1870-1948
65.
‘Coastal Scene’
Oil on canvas 51 x 76
Signed
Illustration and text on page 41
Hercules Brabazon Brabazon 1821-1906
67.
‘Chiesa Della Salute’
Watercolour on paper 24.8 x 33
Signed with initials
Illustrated bottom left
Hercules Brabazon Brabazon 1821-1906
68.
‘Basilique St. Denis’
Watercolour on paper 25.5 x 34.5
Signed with initials
Illustrated above
Sir William Orpen R.A. R.H.A. N.E.A.C. 1878-1931
66.
‘The Chelsea Arts Ball’
Pen, ink and coloured washes on paper 25 x 19
Signed
Exhibited: Autumn Anthology, an Exhibition of British,
French and Irish Paintings, Oct.-Nov. 1993, Pyms
Gallery, London, Catalogue Number 26, Illustrated
Illustrated above
The central figures in the drawing are Yvonne Aubicq and
Orpen himself. Orpen painted Yvonne as a Nun in Paris in 1919.
As early as 1906, Orpen, with friends, would go to parties
dressed as Chardin had depicted himself in the Louvre selfportraits, in a dressing gown with high collar and cravat, blue
and white kerchief round his head, knotted on top and small
spectacles on the end of his nose. About this time he painted
a Self-Portrait with Glasses wearing this attire. A later selfportrait in similar style, Man with a Paintbrush, was painted
for the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, and the Laing Art Gallery
have a full-length version, The Painter. The 1906 Self-Portrait
with Glasses is now in the collection of an Australian Museum.
Wellington Colomb 1827-1895
69.
‘A Killarney Lake Scene with Cattle’
(Possibly Torc Rock and Devils Island)
Watercolour on paper 47 x 94
Signed
Wellington Colomb was the second son of the painter General
George J. Colomb H.R.H.A. 1878-1874. he was born in 1827
and exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy between 1848
and 1856 from his home in the Hibernian Military School,
Phoenix Park. He joined the R.I.C. and while stationed in
Killarney he exhibited a number of views from that region at
the R.H.A. between 1858 and 1862. In 1875 he was appointed
assistant Inspector-General of the R.I.C. and from his Dublin
address 23, Leeson Park contributed two Killarney subjects to
the R.H.A. in 1879.
Illustrated above
Matthew Fortesque fl. 1909-1924
67. Hercules Brabazon Brabazon
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70.
‘Killiney from the Strand’
Watercolour on card 21.5 x 37
Signed with initials and dated 1909, also inscribed on reverse
Illustrated on page 49
70. Matthew Fortesque
Claude Hayes R.I. 1852-1922
71.
‘Harvest Fields, Farnham, Surrey’
Watercolour on paper 23 x 34.5
Signed
Literature:Illustrated in ‘The Dictionary of British Watercolour
Artists’ by Hl. Mallalieu
Vol. 2 page 408
Illustrated below
72. Norman GarstiN
Howard Helmick R.B.A. 1845-1907
73.
‘Bit of Blue’
Illustration and text on page 31
Thomas Fredrick Collier fl. 1848-1888
Norman Garstin 1847-1926
72.
‘Ludford Bridge’ (Ludlow, Shropshire)
Watercolour on paper 38 x 31
Signed
Illustrated above right
Ludford Bridge was exhibited in 1924 at Walker’s Galleries,
New Bond Street, where Norman and his daughter, Alethea,
had a joint exhibition. It was No 39 in the catalogue and was
priced at 14 guineas. The picture must have been painted in
the Summer of 1918 when Garstin held a painting school at
Ludlow in Shropshire. The Garstins stayed at Ludford Lodge,
which is a large house just across the bridge and the river
Teme to the south of the town. While the Garstins were at
Ludlow they heard of the death of their second son, Denis,
who was serving with the British Expeditionary Force in
Archangel. His death may explain why Garstin appears to
have painted only two other pictures at Ludlow. Denis was
Garstin’s favourite son and, as Garstin was a pacifist, his
death would have been all the more bitter. Ludford Bridge is
included in the Catalogue Raisonné of Garstin’s works, for
which see Richard Pryke Norman Gastin: Irishman and Newlyn
Artist (Spire Books, 2005) page 211.
Richard Pryke
74.
‘Fruit and Flowers on a Mossy Bank’
Watercolour heightened with white on paper 38.5 x 56.5
Signed and dated
Illustrated above
Thomas Fredrick Collier fl. 1848-1888
75.
‘A Vase of Roses’
Watercolour heightened with white on paper 37 x 27
Signed and dated 1880
Illustrated above
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We are grateful to the following for their kind assistance in the preparation of this catalogue:
Christopher Ashe
Gillian Buckley
Dr. Paul Caffrey
Dr. Julian Campbell
Lady Davis-Goff
David J. Griffin
Dr. Bodo Hofstetter
Claudia Kinmonth
Prof. Kenneth McConkey
Susan Mulhall
Peter Murray
Michael Olohan
Prof. Niamh O’Sullivan
Peter Pearson
Dr. Richard Pryke
Dr. Catherine Puget
Colin Rafferty
Glen Thompson
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Saturday (during Exhibition only) 11.30 a.m. – 2.30 p.m.
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