Gorry Gallery Exhibition of 18th - 21st Century Irish Paintings

GORRY GALLERY

George Barret c.1732-1784 Detail

Front Cover: George Barret c.1732-1784 A Classical Landscape with Figures and Classical Ruins based on the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli Catalogue Number 1

GORRY GALLERY An Exhibition of 18th-21st Century Irish Paintings 1st-19th November 2021 The exhibition can be viewed Monday to Saturday from 12-5pm (or by appointment) and online at www.gorrygallery.ie We will be open for viewing on the 27th, 28th and 29th prior to opening and sale Paintings can be purchased by email at gorrygallery@icloud.com, by phone 01 679 5319 or at the gallery where catalogues are available

All measurements in this catalogue are in centimetres (height precedes width) www.gorrygallery.ie © Gorry Gallery

1. George Barret c.1732-1784 A Classical Landscape with Figures and Classical Ruins based on the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli Oil on canvas 83 x 116.5 The frame on this picture is a fine French carved oak example, dating to the early to mid 18th cent. The scrolling foliate ornamentation at corners and centres spreads outward from cartouches which project very little from the contours of the frame, and the style of the cartouches and foliage is very much in keeping with the interior boiserie carvings of the period. These are positioned between a leaf-and-tongue sight, a sanded band and a plain knull, dropping to a plain outer band. The cartouches are not over emphasised, and the overall design of the frame does not highlight the individual parts – a later tendency.

French frames were generally carved in oak, which made them far more resilient than their English/Irish counterparts. This particular frame was originally completely water gilded; the present gilded surface dates to the later 18th century, still employing the traditional red Armenian bole as a base but applied with an oil gilding technique.

Susan Mulhall

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George Barret c.1732-1784 Unlike his great rival Richard Wilson, George Barret never travelled to Italy, nevertheless the classical world pervades his work, often, as here, in harmonious conjunction with an atmospheric evocation of the Irish landscape. In a painting commissioned by the Taylors of Headfort (private collection, Gorry Gallery, he introduced the late antique Tempietto at Clitumno, as depicted by Piranesi. Similarly here, at the centre of a lush landscape more redolent of the verdure of his native land than the sunbaked terrain of the campagna, he depicts a circular building which is clearly based on the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli. One of the most famous vestiges of classical antiquity, the much-imitated structure, also known as the Temple of the Sibyl, had been built in the 1st century B.C.. Such was its appeal that Frederick Hervey, Bishop of Derry (and Earl of Bristol) had attempted to buy the temple and bring it to Ireland, but this was vetoed by the Pope and instead the Earl-Bishop built at imitation,

the Mussenden Temple, overlooking the Derry coast at Downhill.

Barret had first painted the Temple of Vesta motif in a landscape intended for the Library at Russborough, County Wicklow, where he copied a small gouache by Giovanni Battista Busiri. Here, however, some years later, Barret has attained his own mature – and very recognisable – style, and creates a work of great appeal, playfully adopting his source by placing the temple on a much less pronounced eminence and adding oversized pieces of classical sculpture on pedestals which can be glimpsed within the temple.

In the years immediately preceding his departure for London in about 1763, Barret seems to have been exceptionally busy which rather contradicts Strickland’s assertion, paraphrasing Gilbert, that the artist left Dublin for London as he was ‘finding little encouragement in his art’. Certainly, London offered wider scope for patronage and greater opportunity to study the work of Claude and other old masters, but this is not to say that Barret was lacking commissions, or inspiration, at home. As Barret signs his landscapes only very rarely, and dates pictures even less frequently, it has been difficult hitherto to define precisely his Irish work and distinguish it from that produced in England. However, an analysis of his oeuvre clearly indicates that he produced some of his finest paintings not in the cosmopolitan capital, with the all the opportunities that it offered, but in Dublin. Anne Crookshank and the Knight and Glin noted this early precocity, writing how his early work ‘established that he was already a completely developed painter before he came to London’.

A relatively complete chronology for Barret’s work in Ireland can in fact be pieced together, from the occasional signed work and other documentary evidence. His first dated picture is from 1747 (private collection), the lack of sophistication of which indicates that it is a student production and in this year Barret was awarded a premium from the Dublin Society Schools. The comparative immaturity of the 1747 picture may, incidentally, be taken as evidence in support of 1732 as Barret’s date of birth, rather than 1728 as is sometimes given. By about 1750, he had received the important commission from Joseph Leeson, already mentioned, to copy some works by Busiri which Leeson had purchased on his Grand Tour and to supplement these with a group of original landscapes to decorate the Library (now the Dining Room) at Russborough.

It is, however, in the second half of the 1750s that Barret refined his personal style. Two dated landscapes are important here. The first, at Farmleigh, is dated 1755, and has been well characterised as being in the manner of Zuccarelli. A second, published by Michael Wynne, is also dated in the 1750s, however, the last digit of the date is illegible. In these landscapes several of the recurring structural characteristics of Barret’s art are present and a series of impressive pictures may be grouped around them. These share many of the same compositional devices, several of which are also present here: a dominating tree on the left of the composition; water – a lake, river or cascade – in the centre, or just to the right of centre; and a distant view to blue mountains which blends into the sky. All this is enlivened by diminutive figures, often dressed in blue and red,

which evolve from rococo-Italianate to more substantial fishermen or travellers. In the present work, as often, Barret is particularly adept in the treatment of the recession into the distance, playing confidently with strategically placed architectural elements which combine successfully with subtly handled aerial perspective.

In addition to his work at Russborough, during his time in Ireland Barret won patronage from Lord Powerscourt and the Conollys of Castletown. The artist features in a letter of 7 December 1762 from Emily FitzGerald to Lord Kildare. Also in 1762, the year that Barret was working at Castletown, where is he recorded in Lord Powerscourt’s company, he was actively engaged in painting Powerscourt’s famous Wicklow demesne. He advertised, ailseeking subscriptions for engravings after four of his Powerscourt landscapes ‘which were to be scraped, under his direction by John Dixon of Dublin’. The four views were to include; Powerscourt House and the Adjacent Country; A View in the Dargle called the Castle Rock; A View of the Dargle and The Waterfall in Powerscourt Park, however, the project was never realised. Gilbert records the relationship between Powerscourt and Barret ‘who in early life passed much of his time at this nobleman’s demesne in the county of Wicklow, the scenery of which formed the subject of many of his paintings.’ Several of Barret’s painted views of Powerscourt survive, at least two of Powerscourt House and four of the famous waterfall, including the well-known work in the National Gallery of Ireland. These can all be dated with some certainty to the very early 1760s. The present work is clearly dateable to after the Russborough commission and the dated works of the mid-1750s but before the Powerscourt Waterfall pictures, perhaps circa 1758-60. It is a characteristic and very appealing example of Barret’s art and a very welcome addition to his Irish period oeuvre.

We thank William Laffan and Logan Morse for their assistance in cataloguing this work.

Detail

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2. Charles Collins c.1694/1704-1744 A Still-Life with Dead Game, Bittern, Snipe, Partridge with a Spaniel and a Gun Oil on canvas 84 x 107 Signed and dated 1730

Charles Collins c.1694 /1704-1744 Biographical evidence is scarce for Charles Collins, which is disappointing as he is of immense interest as a rare and highly talented, Irish still-life painter known for his ‘meticulously detailed’ works (AAI, Vol. 2, 212). Indeed, Collins is one of the most significant Irish artists to have emerged since the publication of Crookshank and Glin’s groundbreaking work, The Painters of Ireland. Although mentioned by Strickland as working in Ireland, he had fallen into obscurity and, by 1981, when his striking Still Life with a Lobster on a Delft Dish was purchased by the Tate Gallery in London, the little that was known of his life was confused. Collins has since been reclaimed for the Irish school and is acknowledged as one of the most accomplished artists to have worked here in the early and middle years of the eighteenth century.

Collins is specifically referred to as an ‘Irish Master’ in the Dublin Evening Post for 4 May 1786 in connection with the sale of the

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collection of the doctor, and property developer, Gustavus Hume in which a game still-life was favourably noted: ‘a dead hare, dead birds etc...allowed by the first judges in point of elegance and performance, to be inferior to none’. Seemingly this formed a pendant to another work by the artist showing life fowl. A further still-life was included in the collection of James Digges La Touche that was auctioned in Geminiani’s rooms in Dublin in May 1764, while the Kildares of Carton also owned an example of his art.

Collins worked in both oil and watercolour and seems to have been almost exclusively a painter of still-life. Vertue referred to him as a ‘bird painter’, although also noting a self-portrait, while Horace Walpole described him as a painter of ‘all sorts of fowl and game’. Certainly, game predominates in Collins’s oeuvre, as is evident in the present very accomplished work dating from 1730 and a related still-life in the National Gallery of Ireland from the same year. These are among the earliest surviving works by Collins, perhaps suggesting that the later date given for his birth of 1704 is

correct. Both this and the NGI picture (Illustrated) are very much in the Dutch tradition of seventeenth-century artists such as Jan Weenix, Franz Snyders and Jan Fyt and it has been suggested by Nicola Figgis that Collins may have pursued a period of training in the Low Countries (AAI, Vol. 2, 212). Instead, however, of being stylistically retardataire, here he is working in a manner comparable to his most advanced French contemporaries such as Alexandre-François Desportes and Jean-Baptise Oudry. One comment in a sale catalogue of March 1782 shows the esteem in which he was held – ‘equal to Hondikooter’ [sic] – and within the wider field of British and Irish art, Collins has been lauded, despite the lowly ranking of the genre in which he worked, as being among those artists whose ‘feeling for paint and colour...heralded Reynolds’.

Six years after he painted this game still-life Collins embarked on what is perhaps his most famous work, a series of twelve oil paintings of birds in naturalistic settings. Nine of these are now owned by the National Trust at Anglsey Abbey, while three are in an Irish private collection. Also in 1736, Collins, together with Peter Paillou, embarked on a series of watercolours of British birds and mammals for the collector Taylor White. These sheets have long been admired and many of them are now in collection of McGill University, Montreal.

Collins is perhaps the only Irish artist of the period to consistently explore the genre of still-life in oil. It is noteworthy how William Ashford, for example, quickly abandoned still-life for landscape after painting a few, rather naïve, flower pieces early in his career. There was, however, a market for the genre, though not comparable in scale to that for portraiture or landscape, and many still-lives were exhib-

ited at the Society of Artists in Dublin, though often by amateurs. At the same time, still-life flourished in media other than oil, most notably in the art of Samuel Dixon and his Capel Street apprentices such as Daniel O’Keeffe, James Reilly and Gustavus Hamilton. The one other eighteenth-century artist in oil who worked in a manner close to Collins in Dublin was the slightly later Charles Lewis.

Signature

National Gallery of Ireland

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3. James Arthur O’Connor c.1792-1841 Mountainous Landscape with Castle and Bridge Oil on mill board 23 x 28 Label verso ‘R. Davy’s London, Manufacture’ (A favoured support of O’Connor)

4. William Sadler II c.1782-1839 Monastic Settlement with Tower House Oil on wood 13.8 x 19.2 Provenance: Gorry Gallery; dd Private collection

5. William Sadler II c.1782-1839 Shipwreck Oil on wood 22.5 x 27.5

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Hugh Douglas Hamilton 1740-1808 Jane Boyd’s mother was Anne Hamilton, the daughter of Galbraith Hamilton of Dublin. Jane’s husband was Henry Lawes Luttrell. A pastel of Henry Lawes Luttrell by Hamilton forms part of the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland (NGI.6992). Lady Carhampton also features in another pastel by Hamilton, held at Musée Cognacq-Jay, Paris This pastel probably dates from 1792, as Hamilton had returned to Dublin from Rome on the 24th April 1792. Lady Carhampton, according to the Dublin Journal Newspaper Archives, hosted a ball in Dublin on 8 October 1972.

The frame, with its husk top edge and pearl sight was the preferred frame used by Hamilton during this period.

6. Hugh Douglas Hamilton 1740-1808 Bust-length Portrait of the Countess of Carhampton, née Jane Boyd (Irish, c.1760-1831), wearing a Scarf in her Hair Pastel on paper 23 x 19 In original oval carved Gilt Wood frame Provenance: Killiney Castle;

Collection of Edward A. McGuire;

Christie's, Newtown Park House Contents Sale,

Blackrock, 20 September 1976, lot 441, (inscribed '441'

in chalk, verso) Exhibited: Old Dublin Society Loan Exhibition, 20 September 2 October 1937, Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Charlemont

House, Dublin, no. 30 Literature: Edward A. McGuire, Pastel Portrait Painting in Ireland in the

XVII Century, the Connoisseur, January 1939, p. 11, illustration No. II

Joseph Peacock, R.H.A. c.1783-1837 Joseph Peacock was a painter of genre scenes and portraits, describing himself as a ‘familiar life and animal painter.’ Although his works are rare, he is known for his large oil on panel depictions of outdoor fair scenes, including Palmerstown Fair in 1811 and the Festival of St. Kevin at the Seven Churches, Glendalough in 1813 (Ulster Museum).

Crookshank and Glin note that these paintings ‘show his extremely sharply observed, almost miniature-like technique.’

Peacock exhibited paintings in Dublin from 1809 to 1821, including two landscape compositions with James Arthur O’Connor (1792-1841) at the Dublin Society’s House, 18 Dawson Street in 1819. Later, Peacock was chosen as one of the original Royal Hibernian Academicians, contributing to the Academy’s inaugural exhibition in 1826, and, alongside his son who was also a painter, exhibited regularly thereafter. Peacock’s studio was located at 21 Bachelor’s Walk where he also practiced as a ‘restorer of ancient paintings’ before his death in 1837.

7. Joseph Peacock R.H.A. c.1783-1837 Portrait of an Artist (possibly a self portrait) Oil on wood 18.3 x 15.2 Signed

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John Henry Campbell 1757–1828 John Henry Campbell (1757-1829) was educated at the Dublin Society’s Schools and later established himself as a topographical landscape artist, working in both oil and watercolours. He first exhibited in Dublin at Allen’s, 32 Dame Street in 1800, and later contributed to the Royal Hibernian Academy’s inaugural exhibition in 1826 and again in 1828, a year before his death. His daughter and pupil, Cecilia Margaret (1791-1857) also became a painter and wax modeller, and married the animal painter, George Nairn (1799-1850).

Well-known for his watercolour depictions of Dublin’s environs and neighbouring counties, Campbell’s works in oil are typically more ambitious in composition and detail, and, as per Crookshank and Glin, ‘they prefigure the romanticism of [James Arthur] O’Connor.’

Built on the shores of Lough Leane, the original fifteenth-century tower house was held by the famous chieftain O’Donoghue Mór.

Having been for centuries a stronghold of strategic importance, it had undergone many changes. Campbell emphasises it as the dominant feature of a cluster of buildings, including a military barracks, all framed by foreground trees and the Kerry mountains.

Lough Leane was already celebrated as the largest of the picturesque Killarney lakes, associated with many legends of O’Donoghue’s supernatural exploits.Visitors hired boats, many of the boatmen well-known characters of the time, to view the castle and the lake, and Campbell has included a small boat at the right. Figures, perhaps tourists, are crossing a bridge at the left. Ross Castle was taken into state care in 1970, and is today a national monument, restored and open to the public. Two hundred years after Campbell’s interpretation it remains a favourite subject for artists.

Ross Castle, Killarney Ross Castle is shown here as the many writers, poets and artists from Britain and elsewhere saw it when Killarney was in the early stages of its transformation into Ireland’s most visited tourist destination.

8. John Henry Campbell 1757-1828 Ross Castle, Killarney Oil on canvas 38.6 x 51 In their original frames of the distinct design favoured by the artist, made by Cornelius Callaghan, Clare Street (original label verso) Signed with initials, original inscription verso

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Old Court Castle, Co. Wicklow. Little Sugar in the Distance This attractive view is of a rural area just south of Bray, now swallowed up in the seaside resort’s twentieth-century expansion. In the foreground a simple stone bridge spans the Swan River, shown flowing vigorously down towards its meeting with the Dargle. The bridge carries what is now Killarney Road and the trackway behind leads the eye up to Old Court Castle positioned prominently in the centre. The castle is a typical tower house, probably built in the mid fifteenth century and still extant today. Its tall battlemented shape and narrow windows are accentuated by the light from the west.

A watercolour of 1799 by Joseph Turner, now in the Royal Irish Academy, shows a low, stone hall with a thatched roof attached to the tower. Campbell’s view omits this feature, traces of which remain to the present.

Behind, the Little Sugar Loaf completes the view to the south. This peak is often depicted overshadowed by its more dramatic neighbour the Great Sugar Loaf: here it

stands alone, its gentle cone shape showing against a dramatic evening sky.

A fisherman with a basket sits on the river bank with other figures and a laden donkey behind. The substantial house at the roadside has chimneys at the gable ends emitting wisps of rising smoke. By contrast to the left and right of the bridge there are thatched cabins. The shadowy one at the left has a single but substantial chimney. The even more modest cabin at the right is crudely whitewashed and may well be one-roomed, a widespread type at the time. Intentionally or not, Campbell depicts a loose grouping of very different Irish dwellings.

Lord Wicklow’s Boat House on Arklow River Here Campbell shows a peaceful stretch of the Avoca River, downstream from the famous Meeting of the Waters and shortly before the river reaches the sea at Arklow, hence its local name. The well-wooded areas to the right and in the foreground are part of the lands of Shelton Abbey, home of the Earls of Wicklow. The river marked the boundary with the Earl of Carysfort’s lands, and a small part of his Glenart woods is visible in the middle distance.

Several white goats enliven the foreground greenery, while the Avoca River takes a sharp left turn behind the left-hand figure, whose presence is echoed by that of the figure, pointing with stick in hand, at the other side. A rowing-boat with a third figure in the bow is drawn up on the bank. Campbell’s ‘boat house’ is conspic-

9. John Henry Campbell 1757-1828 Old Court Castle, Co. Wicklow, Little Sugar in the Distance Oil on canvas 38.8 x 51 Signed and dated 1826 verso

uous on slightly higher ground behind — a circular squat tower with a conical roof and a relatively narrow entrance, it seems more than a shelter for boats. There is a small window or two at the upper level and a hint of smoke from the central chimney stack. The structure may well have provided storage for boating equipment, hence the name, but also served as a summer house for the family.

Lord Wicklow’s impressive Shelton Abbey, out of sight at the right, was substantially enlarged and remodelled in Gothic Revival style in 1819. William, 4th earl of Wicklow, had succeeded to the estate the year before, not long after his marriage. Perhaps the boat house was a retreat used for his wife’s enjoyment, and as time passed, also for that of their seven daughters.

Mary Davies

10. John Henry Campbell 1757-1828 Lord Wicklows Boat House on Arklow River Oil on canvas 38 x 50.5 Signed and inscribed verso

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Dupré, French School, mid 19th century Lola Montez could be described as a celebrity, in the current use of the word, who used her charm and good looks to make a career for herself as a dancer and actress. She attracted a cult following and had many admirers across Europe, North America and Australia. Montez was notorious for her beauty, her reinvention as a “Spanish” dancer, and her many marriages and affairs with rich or powerful men. Born Marie Dolores Eliza Rosana Gilbert, in Grange, Co. Sligo, she was the daughter of Edward Gilbert, a soldier serving in Co. Cork and Eliza Oliver, the illegitimate daughter of Charles Silver Oliver MP (for Kilmallock) of Castle Oliver, Kilfinane, Co. Limerick. Her parents married around the time of her birth and they went to live at King House, Boyle, Co. Roscommon before they departed for India. Her father died shortly afterwards in 1823. Eliza was a difficult child and was sent to Scotland to be educated and then to Paris and Bath. When she was 16, Eliza eloped to Co. Meath where she married Thomas James, a young soldier. They settled in India but the marriage collapsed. Returning to England she decided to become an actress and dancer with the stage name Lola Montez. She invented the risqué Spider Dance which involved raising her skirt to a height which revealed her lack of undergarments. After making her debut at the Haymarket Theatre, London, in 1843, she was revealed as a fraud by Lord Ranelagh, one of her disgruntled admirers. She left for Germany and later settled in Paris. There she had affairs with Franz Liszt (who introduced her to the literary circle of George Sand), Alexandre Dumas and the newspaper proprietor Charles, Baron Dujarier, who was killed in a duel by one of Montez’s other admirers. By 1846, she was the official mistress of Ludwig I, King of Bavaria, who called her Lolitta. The king created her the Countess of Landsfeld in her own right, granted her an annuity and gave her a large house at Barer Strasse 7, Munich. From there, she exercised considerable control over the king and political influence which made her very unpopular with his subjects. After the abdication of Ludwig, Montez returned to England where she was arrested for bigamy for contracting a second marriage. She left for the USA where she took to the stage as an actress and dancer. In 1853, she married Patrick Purdy Hull, owner of the San Francisco Whig. Her house in the picturesque Grass Valley, California, is an Historical Landmark (no.292).

When this marriage ended she departed for Australia, performing in Sydney, Melbourne, Ballarat and Castlemaine where she was the toast of her male audiences comprised mostly of miners. Her looks

11. Dupré, French School, mid 19th century Portrait of the Irish Actress and Dancer Donna Lola Montez, Countess of Landsfeld (1821-1861) Painted c.1847 Watercolour on ivory with gouache highlights Oval, 8.5 x 6.25, set in an ebonised frame with a gilded brass mount Signed: Dupré Illustrated actual size Provenance: Private collection

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fading, she returned to Ireland in 1858, where she delivered lectures in Dublin, Cork and Limerick. These were published, along with an autobiography. Montez wrote Anecdotes of Love Being a True Account of the Most Remarkable Events Connected with the History of Love, in All Ages and Among All Nations (1858) and The Arts of Beauty or Secrets of a Lady’s Toilet with Hints to Gentleman on the Art of Fascinating (1858). Montez suffered from the tertiary effects of syphilis and had a massive stroke. She was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.

The cult of celebrity requires readily available images. Miniaturists were adept at supplying this demand for portraits of the famous, particularly before photography became more widespread in the 1850s. King Ludwig commissioned several portraits of Montez.

In 1847, her portrait was painted in oils by his court painter Joseph Karl Stieler (1781-1858) for the king’s gallery of beauties at the Nymphenburg Palace, Munich. This miniature portrait of Montez is by an unidentified French miniaturist who signed his work Dupré.

It was based on the Stieler portrait which captures the sitter’s good looks and shows Montez wearing her characteristic mantilla. There are however some differences in pose and in minor details of the jewellery and dress. Montez inspired popular songs and her adventurous life has been the subject of books, novels, plays, musicals and films. Mount Lola in California was named in her honour.

Dr Paul Caffrey

George Mullins fl.1756-c.1786

12. George Mullins fl.1756 - c.1786 River Landscape with Figures Oil on canvas 68 x 91

It is pleasing to publish here a further addition to the tiny secure oeuvre

Provenance: Galeria Moody, Buenos Aires, Argentina;

Private collection

of George Mullins, a key figure within the Dublin Group of landscape painters which can be added to the group illustrated and discussed in the catalogue of the last exhibition held at Gorry Galley (October 2020).

Mullins was a pupil of James Mannin at the Dublin Society Schools after which, according to Pasquin, he ‘worked at Mr Wise’s manufactory at Waterford and painted snuff-boxes…in imitation of…Birmingham ware’. On his return to Dublin he married the owner of the Horseshoe and Magpie ‘an ale house in Temple Bar much frequented by theatrical performers’; Hugh Douglas Hamilton married Mrs Mullins’s sister.

Having won several other prizes while at the Schools, in 1763 Mullins was awarded a premium by the Dublin Society for the ‘best original landscape painted in oil’. Two years later, giving the Horseshoe and Magpie as his address, he sent three landscapes to the first exhibition of the Society of Artists and continued to show at the South William Street exhibitions until the end of the decade.

His recorded exhibition pieces, including demesne landscapes, Old

Testament subjects and topographical landscapes – views of Lough Erne and Leixlip – indicate that he painted across a wider range than his small extant oeuvre would suggest. In 1769, his final year of exhibiting, Mullins’s View in the County of Wicklow was given pride of place above the chimney piece facing the door in the octagonal exhibition room. However, in August of the following year Faulkner’s Dublin Journal advertised the sale of ‘the household furniture, paintings and other effects of George Mullins who has gone to reside in London’; also offered for sale was the lease ‘(of which there are twenty years to come November next) of the well-accustomed house the Horse-shoe and Magpie, in Temple-bar’.

In London Mullins exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1770 and 1775 with his work being admired by no less than Horace Walpole. The present fine landscape relates closely to another example in the collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery with which it shares a distinctive conical vernacular building.

13. Adam Buck 1759-1833 Portrait of a Young Man Pencil and watercolour on paper 12.5 x 11.5 Signed

14. Adam Buck 1759-1833 Portrait of Henry Wood (aged 8 or 9) Pencil and watercolour on paper 12.5 x 11.5 Signed and dated 1823

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15. Richard Brydges Beechey H.R.H.A. 1808-1895 South Stack Lighthouse, Holyhead Oil on canvas 92 x 137.5 Signed and dated 1872, inscribed and dated verso Exhibited: Royal Hibernian Academy 1872, no. 41;

Royal Academy, London, 1872, no. 1039 Provenance: Private collection

Richard Brydges Beechey H.R.H.A. 1808-1895

South Stack Lighthhouse, Holyhead 1872 With his customary penchant for stormy sea scenes, Beechey has depicted the South Stack Lighthouse, illuminated by winter sunlight, and silhouetted against dark scudding rainclouds. Seagulls hover over white-capped waves, while a line of cormorants take flight, heading towards the rocky shore. To the right of the lighthouse, a suspension bridge connects South Stack to Holy Island (Holyhead, or Ynys Gybi). Tiny figures are visible on the suspension bridge, watching the progress of a three-masted barque, that struggles against wind and tide, endeavouring to steer clear of the rocky coastline. Visible on the mountain side is a nineteenth century castellated structure; above that can be seen roads and walls, and beyond that again, the dark mountain top of Holyhead, shrouded in white clouds. Waves crash against the cliffs, while a section of ship’s mast, floating in the foreground, provides an eloquent momento of the fragility of the wooden sailing ships that frequented these waters.

Built by Trinity House in 1809, as a result of reports compiled

by Capt. Hugh Evans, the South Stack Lighthouse is located on a small island off the westernmost tip of Holy Island in Anglesea.

Four hundred steps were cut into the granite cliff face, to provide access to the site, while the stone used in the building of the lighthouse was also taken from nearby cliffs. The designer was Daniel Asher Alexander (1768-1846) who had been appointed consultant engineer to Trinity House two years earlier. South Stack was his first lighthouse, and it was built by the engineer and builder Joseph Nelson. The elegant suspension bridge depicted in Beechey’s painting was constructed in 1828, but has since been replaced by other bridges, the most recent dating from 1997. Visible also is the

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castellated outline of Elin’s Tower, commissioned by local landowner and MP William Owen Stanley and built in 1867. Named after his wife Elin, the tower was originally intended to aid the study of archaeological sites in the area—Holy Island is noted for its Iron Age and Roman remains—and is now owned and maintained by the RSPB. Beechey’s painting includes cormorants and gulls, and the area is today still famous for its birdlife.

Born in London in 1808, Richard Brydges Beechey was a naval officer who became one of Ireland’s most accomplished marine painters. After training at the Royal Naval College in Portsmouth, he was stationed in the West Indies and in 1825 joined HMS Blossom, serving in the Pacific under his older brother, the hydrographer Frederick William Beechey. During this time Beechey landed on Pitcairn Island, where he sketched John Adams, the last surviving mutineer from HMS Bounty. His 1834 painting H. M. Fisgard Weathering the Rocks off Ushant, exhibited at the Gorry Gallery in 2010, depicts a naval vessel in heavy seas, with rocks and a headland in the distance.

It is probably the canvas first shown at the British Institution in 1834 (No. 317): “The dangerous situation of H.M. ship Fisgard, Capt.

T. Bryam Martin, endeavouring to weather the rocks off Ushant, having been embayed between that and Abreuvac, and carrying perhaps the greatest of canvas ever known under similar circumstances.

(16th January 1801 at 8.00am)” In 1835 Beechey was transferred to the Admiralty Survey of Ireland, and his surveying of Lough Erne, along with Lieut. James Woolfe, marked the beginning of years of creating detailed charts of the coast and rivers of Ireland. Throughout these years, he painted consistently, exhibiting both at the Royal Academy and the Royal Hibernian Academy. Promoted in 1840 to the rank of Commander, he continued to paint, many of his canvases depicting Irish scenes, including the work shown at the RA in 1868: “A water-logged and abandoned timber vessel being brought into

16. Richard Brydges Beechey H.R.H.A. 1808-1895 The Total Loss of the Intrinsic of Liverpool in the year 1836 Oil on canvas 92.5 x 135.5 Signed Exhibited: Royal Hibernian Academy, 1842, no. 572;

Cork Art Union, 1843;

Great Industrial Exhibition, Dublin, 1853, no. 566

Black Sod Bay, West of Ireland, by the coastguard, the natives in their “curraghs” (canvas-covered boats) profiting by the occasion; the cliff, upwards of 2000 ft., represented in the distance, forms part of the west coast of Achill Island”. The following year Beechey exhibited The sea is His, and He made it, a painting of a dismasted ship floundering in heavy seas. As with many of Beechey’s paintings, the Biblical connection is evident, the title being taken from Psalm 95.5. At the British Institution, in 1858, he showed Hooker, off Cork Harbour. After first exhibiting at the RHA in 1842, where he showed three works, including The Total Loss of the “Intrinsic” of Liverpool in 1836, Beechey did not show at the Academy in Dublin again until 1861. Two years later he showed a view of Doeega Head on Achill Island and in 1868 submitted views of Clare Island and Killarney. Over the following two decades he consistently showed at the RHA, with many of his paintings clearly based on sketches made in earlier years. After retiring from the Navy in 1864, with the rank of Admiral, Beechey settled for a time at Monkstown, Co. Dublin, and four years later was elected HRHA. In 1874, he was living at 110 Pembroke Road, and in that year painted Eagle Island, off Erris Head, West of Ireland, a work exhibited a decade later at the RHA, and shown at the Gorry Gallery in 2003. In 1885 he was living at Plymouth, where he continued painting. Another late work, Bringing Home the Turf, County Kerry, was shown at the Gorry Gallery in 2005. There are works by Beechey in collections in Ireland and abroad. His Mail Boat “Connaught” is in the National Gallery of Ireland, while a view of the Blasket Islands is in the Royal St. George Yacht Club, along with a panoramic view of Kingstown Harbour.

Fastnet Rock, and Lights, off Cape Clear, exhibited at the RHA in 1877, is now in the collection of the Royal Ocean Racing Club, while HMS Erebus passing through the chain of bergs (1842) is in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich.

The Total Loss of the Intrinsic of Liverpool in the year 1836 This dramatic canvas by Richard Brydges Beechey records in terrifying detail the last moments of the Intrinsic, a sailing ship that sank off the Co. Clare coast, on 30th January 1836. No crew member or passenger survived when, during a violent storm, the vessel was broken apart by waves at Lookout Cliffs, near Bishop’s Rock, just west of Kilkee. [the bay has since been renamed Intrinsic Bay] Built at Chepstow in 1832, the Intrinsic was a full-rigged barque of three hundred tons. Under the command of Captain Quirke and laden with a cargo that included iron, tin, glass, copper, and axles and wheels for railway carriages, she had set out from Liverpool on the 14th January, bound for New Orleans.

The painting depicts a dramatic scene, with a crowd of onlookers gathered on the cliffs, witnessing the last moments of the dismasted vessel. On flat slabs of rock overlooking the sea, a large group of villagers and local people have assembled. Some kneel, weeping and praying; others cover their eyes so as not to witness the awful tragedy.

Their hair and clothing blowing wildly in the strong wind, the onlookers cling together hopelessly, unable to assist those on board the stricken vessel. A priest raises his cross, praying for those on board.

At the end of the cliff can be seen uniformed coast guards, wearing black hats. Anchored in the middle of the small bay, the ship lies at the mercy of giant waves sweeping in from the Atlantic. Just a stump of the foremast remains, while half the mainmast has been snapped off by the raging winds and seas. Tattered remnants of sails fly from the broken bowsprit that rears up, silhouetted against black clouds.

The ship’s lifeboat has been stove in and lies askew on the deck: there is no hope of saving the few passengers and crew that remain. Five figures can be seen on deck, hanging on to taffrails and bulwarks, while two sailors, swept into the sea, cling helplessly to ropes at the side of the ship. The topography of the bay, below Lookout Hill,

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where the Intrinsic went down, is recognisable. In the background is the rocky islet of Illaunawhilla, while further out to sea the massive slab of Bishop’s Rock is silhouetted against the stormy sky.

The wreck was described in vivid detail by Mary John Knott, in an appendix to her book Two Months in Kilkee, published not long after the disaster: Note f. Melancholy Shipwreck.

On the morning of the 30th of Ist month, 1836, after a week of storms, and during a continuance of them from the north-west, the coast-guard sentinel on duty for the day, in taking his accustomed walk along the cliffs, about seven o’clock, (soon after day-light) discovered a large vessel dismasted, riding by two anchors amidst most terrific breakers, in the little bay close under the Look-out Cliff, . .The affecting intelligence was quickly communicated at the village by himself and a peasant. The officer, with the coast-guard, and several persons of influence and nautical experience, with numbers of the inhabitants, flocked to render any assistance in their power; but, alas! none could be given. The name on the stern would be read with a telescope, “Intrinsic of Liverpool.” They saw the supposed captain, with his speaking trumpet, calling to them in vain, but nothing could be heard from the roaring of the breakers, which, after dashing with tremendous violence upwards of 100 feet high against the perpendicular cliffs, rushed back to sea, carrying the unhappy vessel with them, until it was stopped by the anchors.

The next great surge dashed her in again, as far as the cables allowed, which however still kept her from striking the rocks; but from the violence of the waves that broke most fearfully over her, it was evident that she could not long hold together, particularly as from some unknown cause, the hatches which cover the old were off, and much water got down. During this indescribably awful period, a lady came up from the cabin, and looking round at the towering cliffs and dreadful breakers, sunk on her knees in the attitude of prayer, but was soon obliged to go below by the waves, which washed two of the crew overboard, but who, after astonishing exertion in the water, regained their sinking vessel, which, carrying a cargo of 500 tons, was at one moment lifted so high, that the people on the cliffs over the Diamond rocks, thought she would be thrown up amongst them : the next minutes she was engulphed in a valley of foam. As all human efforts were not unavailing, whilst the tempest blew with such violence that the agonized beholders could scarcely keep their feet, the kind-hearted natives, seeing the awful termination at hand, did all that remained in their power, by kneeling down and praying for their poor fellow-creatures about to be swallowed up in the mighty deep. The crew soon after went down to the cabin, no doubt to prepare for the awful change that awaited them—after which they were seen no more. The vessel at length disappeared in a huge wave, and after a short time her shattered frame rose once more, when the next enormous breaker (to use the words of a spectator) shattered it into a thousand pieces, and rolling it over and over, carried most of it and the light part of the cargo out to sea.

A few minutes after the Intrinsic went down, a gull hovering over the spot was seen to descend and pick something out of the water.

The bird then rose to a great height, and let go what the wind wafted ashore, and which proved to be a Lady’s glove. . . None of

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the bodies of the poor sufferers were seen except one, which was observed floating near the Bath House, on the north side of the bay. Two men incautiously rushed out to bring it in, when, awful to relate, they were both carried off by the breakers and drowned.

The body was soon after thrown on shore and decently interred; but those of the two poor men were not got for some time.

This vessel was reported by the agent for the underwriters, who came to take charge of the property, to be one of the best built ships belonging to Liverpool, had just arrived from Calcutta, and was in 14 days again laden for New Orleans with a valuable cargo, including a large quantity of iron, steel, block tin, copper, tin plates, wheels and axles for rail-road carriages, besides cotton goods, cut glass, &c. &c. They were out 14 days from Liverpool, and having sailed round the north of Ireland, were driven by a succession of gales upon the coast, and must have passed the harbour of Galway and many others to the north. Had she been anchored at a distance off the coast, out of reach of the breakers, it is the opinion of persons of considerable nautical experience, that should would have rode out the gale. The lighter part, with the wreck, were strewn for twenty miles along the coast of Malbay, greatly broken up and injured, and was afterwards delivered up with great readiness, or purchased from the agent.

[Mary John Knott Two Months at Kilkee (Dublin, 1836) p. 205-208] Although Beechey’s painting bears no inscription or title on frame or stretcher, the detail given in Mary Knott’s account enables it to be positively identified as the Intrinsic. The artist has depicted the Kilkee coastline accurately, and his visual record is evidently based largely on her written description. Dismasted, the stricken vessel, trapped in the bay, is held by two anchors. Waves break over the deck. Two sailors have been washed overboard but are clambering back aboard. Lying on the deck beside the ship’s wheel can be discerned the figure of a woman, again an important element in Knott’s narrative. The onlookers and coast guards assembled on the cliffs, helpless to assist, also feature in her description.

First shown at the RHA in Dublin in 1842, Beechey’s painting of the last moments of the Intrinsic was included the following year in the third annual exhibition of the Cork Art Union, where it was described as full of “fearful grandeur and terrible sublimity”.

[Cork Constitution, August 31st 1843] A decade later, it was exhibited again, at the Great Exhibition in Dublin, where viewers were reminded the vessel had gone down ‘with all hands’. The frame of the Intrinsic is also noteworthy. It is embellished with gilded gesso, with distinctive foliate ornamentation at the corners. James Gorry notes that this frame is identical to one containing another painting

by Beechey. Now in a private collection in Dublin, it depicts a scene from the Battle of Trafalgar. In 1842, Beechey showed three paintings at the RHA, one depicted the Intrinsic, another was titled The Port of Limerick, while the third was ‘Securing the Prizes after the Battle of Trafalgar’, As Beechey was stationed in Limerick at the time, it can be conjectured that the frames of these paintings may have been made in that city. Both the Intrinsic and Trafalgar paintings surfaced, so to speak, in recent years in Italy, and have been returned to Ireland, after many years, through the efforts of the Gorry Gallery.

Peter Murray

17. Joseph Patrick Haverty R.H.A. 1794-1864 Portrait of the Manders Sisters of Brackenstown, Co. Dublin (one of whom was to marry John Brook Blennerhassett of Rockfield, Co. Limerick) Oil on canvas 102 x 76 Provenance: Christies, Fine Irish Paintings and Drawings, October

1989, Cat. No. 308;

Private collection

Joseph Patrick Haverty R.H.A. 1794-1864 Joseph Patrick Haverty was born in Galway city in 1794. The artist maintained his Galway connection throughout his life, though at various times he lived and exhibited from Rostrevor, Limerick, London and Dublin addresses. Haverty, mainly a portrait painter, is best known his picture of Daniel O’Connell, and from his famous subject paintings, “The Limerick Piper”.

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Howard Eaton Helmick R.B.A. 1845-1907 Howard Helmick was one of the most accomplished socio realist figure painters to focus on rural Irish life, during the late nineteenth century. Born in Zanesville, Ohio, into a farming family, he graduated from Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, before moving to Paris. There he studied under Cabanel at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

He became accomplished at etching and watercolour as well as oil painting. Usually working from bases in Galway and Kinsale, County Cork he sent his paintings to London where he exhibited at the Royal Academy, or to Dublin to show titles at the Royal Hibernia Academy, throughout the 1870s and ’80s. Highly talented as well as prolific, he also showed titles in the top galleries in Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham, where his paintings appealed as they ‘bridged the gap between the traditional demands of the Academy clientele and the need felt by artists for a more factual approach.’ As such his narrative and genre paintings are valued by cultural historians as they help provide an insight into how people looked, and arranged themselves and their possessions, within rural Irish houses. His subject matter varied but often focused on farmers and cottiers, and their interaction and interdependence with rural gentry such as solicitors, and clergymen. So this narrative scene is therefore typical. It centres on the visit to an elderly priest, seated in his kitchen, by a wide-eyed farmer, who having removed his hat clasps it respectfully against his chest, and his wife who reaches forward as if to give an offering to their host. The woman is married, as indicated by her white bonnet, tied at her chin.

She looks her best, wears shoes reserved for the occasion, and holds her hand to her heart, looking earnest and deferential as they talk. In contrast, the young unmarried woman on the left, is far more relaxed.

She wears her apron tucked up and is pausing in her work of kneading dough, to rest her floury hands and gaze at the small barefoot girl highlit in the centre of the scene. Her distinctive pose is echoed

by Helmick in his painting of The Unexpected Visit. Visitors to rural Ireland remarked how women and children frequently went barefoot, usually carrying their shoes to don for special occasions such as this.

The priest was highly regarded, comparable to the country doctor in importance, and other paintings by Helmick, such as A Present for his Reverence (exhibited 1877), The Wayward Daughter (1878) and Candidates for Marriage (1881) focus on that specific respect. All the latter compositions confirm the priest’s high statues by showing him seated (to the left), and those visiting him standing on the right.

The material culture on display in the scene reinforces what we ex-

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18. Howard Eaton Helmick R.B.A. 1845-1907 Probably Presents for his Reverence as Exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery 1886 Oil on canvas 56 x 80 Signed and dated 1885

pect from a comfortable priest’s home. The kitchen is being used to prepare fresh food; and suggestions of what is grown in his garden, such as onions hanging from the ceiling, also appear in a vignette with cabbage and carrots in the foreground. A bundle of salt fish and a sounding horn hang from a nail on the wall. Although an open hearth is not visible here, a supply of turf for cooking and heating is hinted at, with a distinctively shaped turf spade or sleán framing the composition on the left. Coarse earthenware pitchers, here with their partial glaze in green and in red, were an essential part of the young woman’s work of carrying water into the house, and were manufactured by a competing range of Irish potteries, who also made cream setting pans with variously coloured and decorated glazes. One of these, gleaming with its red-glazed interior and wide top, sits on the cool floor, and would have held cream, that was set in it to ripen gradually, before churning it into butter. Helmick was familiar with all such processes and shows a pan filled with cream in Her First Love (1878) which was also exhibited at this gallery [24 June 2009]. The gateleg table and the hooped back chair are a cut above the average vernacular furniture that was typical of a farm kitchen. But the wrought iron rush light holder, seen here holding a tallow candle (beside a pewter jug on the table) was still then the usual form of lighting in most modest households. Alongside it, the outline of a typically Irish wooden drinking vessel, a lámhóg, can also be recognised. The priest has ample implements adorning his walls.

The numerous ladles, spoons and vessels set out on a set of shelves, indicate affluence, even in this backroom. Helmick uses a similar composition, of a small deeply recessed sash window in the background, in his other paintings, and some of the same plenishings recur, as if commonplace. The interior of the farmer’s kitchen would have appeared spartan in comparison, and yet as an outsider, Helmick boldly and sometimes with wry humour, narrated how the working farmers’ contributions underpinned and augmented the priest’s comfort.

Dr Claudia Kinmonth MRIA References: V C. Kinmonth ‘Howard Eaton Helmick Revisited: Matrimony and Material Culture through Irish Art’ in V. Krielkamp ed., Rural Ireland the Inside Story (MacMullen Museum of Art, Boston, 2012), 89-101.

C. Kinmonth, Irish Rural interiors in Art (Yale University Press, 2006), 64, 158-9, 156.

C. Kinmonth, Irish Country Furniture and Furnishings 1700-2000 (Cork University Press, 2020), 426, 429, 438, 440-41.

Erskine Nicol R.S.A., A.R.A. 1825-1904

Study of St Patrick’s Day A Scottish visitor to Ireland, Erskine Nicol established a name for himself as a figure painter of rural Irish life, whose images merged socio realism with a wry outsider’s sense of humour. Born in Leith, just north of Edinburgh, he was apprenticed to a house painter, before attending the Trustees’ Academy from the age of 13, to embark on his career in fine art. His first trip to Ireland in 1846 began a series of visits until by 1862 he established a studio and lodge for himself at Clonave, Lough Derravaragh, county Westmeath. He exhibited many Irish titles in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Liverpool, London’s Royal Academy and Dublin’s Royal Hibernian Academy. Equally accomplished in watercolour paintings, an increasing number of his oil paintings have emerged to be linked with numerous titles in gallery exhibitor lists. It is extraordinary, now, to be able to connect one of his preliminary studies to a finished painting. This juxtaposition is hugely revealing of how he composed and evolved his work.

This confidently sketched oil, in its original Edinburgh frame, has been ‘squared off’, with light pencil lines, ready to scale up and lay out as a larger painting. His wonderfully detailed finished oil ‘the 16th, 17th (St Patricks Day) and 18th of March’ (signed and dated 1856) shares the same proportion and is just over twice as large as this sketch.

Now in the collection of Dublin’s National Gallery (having been purchased in the Gorry Gallery), that more complex, highly finished painting is the same, but with a few notable differences which reveal much about Nicol’s planning and processing of composition and colour.

The feast day of St Patrick, Ireland’s patron saint, involved a heady combination of religion and conviviality, not least as it marked the end of lent, and relief from abstinence. Nicol’s inclusion of a public house, closest to where most of the assembled crowd sit or lounge (on the far right) near the church, is given great prominence in this sketch. Yet it is relegated to a much darker corner in the finished oil.

The church looks slightly different here, is surmounted by crosses,

19. Erskine Nicol R.S.A., A.R.A. 1825-1904 Study of St Patrick’s Day Oil on board 35.5 x 62 Untitled Preliminary oil sketch for ‘The 16th, 17th (St Patrick’s Day) and 18th of March’

and its tower has a steeply pitched roof. This right side of the picture is divided diagonally by a pathway, and the parallel shillelagh, gripped aloft by a dancer in the sketch, is tossed playfully in the air in the finished oil. Both draw our eyes towards the arrival on the left of a smartly dressed group. Behind them is ‘their’ black servant boy, conspicuous in his high collar and stovepipe hat, whose presence in aristocratic circles added status to the richest families ever since the seventeenth century. In the foreground of this sketch, the vignette of a glazed blackware jug, earthenware bowl and linen cloth, is arranged around a stool, which is replaced later with an empty noggin (a dual purpose wooden vessel symbolic of eating and drinking), a tinker’s sweet can, for carrying liquids, and items of blue and white delftware.

Nicol’s use of red to draw the eye across the composition, appears in both versions, except the courting couple seated on the extreme right, are given greater emphasis by having her wear a red petticoat beneath which, as an apparent afterthought, and apparently emphasising religious tensions, the artist has draped a set of rosary beads.

Although Nicol painted many other studies of small groups (of people dancing, courting, fighting, carousing or imbibing), A Shebeen at Donnybrook (1851), was his most closely comparable precursor.

Dr Claudia Kinmonth MRIA References: V. Krielkamp ed., Rural Ireland the Inside Story (MacMullen Museum of Art, Boston, 2012), 34, 152-155.

C. Kinmonth, Irish Rural Interiors in Art (Yale University Press, 2006), 13, 95, 116, 134, 144-5, 186-90, 216, fig. 210.

C. Kinmonth, Irish Country Furniture and Furnishings 1700-2000 (Cork University Press, 2020), 425-9, 433-5, 443-6, figs. 424-5, 428-9, 432-4, 437-40.

C. Kinmonth, ‘Noggins, ‘the nicest work of all’: traditional Irish wooden vessels for eating and drinking’ in Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies, vol. XVIII (2015), 130-151, figs. 2, 8-9.

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20. Erskine Nicol R.S.A., A.R.A. 1825-1904 Waiting for a Bite Oil on canvas 99.9 x 75.5 Signed and dated 1866

Waiting for a Bite Erskine Nicol (1825-1904) was born in Leith, near Edinburgh, and he soon expressed his artistic ambitions: when he was only 13 years old, young Nicol lied about his age to get an artistic training at the Trustees Academy in the Scottish capital, where no pupil was admissible before their fourteenth birthday. He thus defied the will of his father, a cooper who intended his eldest son to get a job that would be more secure. But against all odds, the determined young Scot answered the call of art, attended the classes taught in this school by William Allan and Thomas Duncan, who were both historical painters with a sense of narration, and he then started his own artistic career as a Drawing Master in Leith Academy. His drawings, as well as those of his pupils, were exhibited in this High School in December 1842, and the collection was noted for the ‘taste and skill of the artist’.1 Nicol’s excellent skills in drawing are visible in Waiting for a Bite: the portrait is so finely painted that it has a photographic quality. The bright blue eyes of the angler make him seem alive, while the distinctive shape of his nose, eyebrows and mouth, as well as his carefully-detailed teeth allow us to recognise him among the Irish pantheon painted by Nicol.

Indeed, the sitter was a model that Nicol painted several times

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while he stayed in Ireland in the 1850s and 1860s, as in Midday Rest 2 and Pat among the Old Masters,3 where he is sitting in a luxurious room, admiring the pictures by old Masters surrounding him.

In His Favourite Brew,4 he is plunging a spoon in a whiskey jug, and his sentimental life is illustrated in Molly Brierly 5 and Bashful Suitor,6 an interior in which he awkwardly tries to woo his beloved, exhibited in 1887 in Chicago Interstate Industrial Exposition, where it was lent by railroad millionaire George I. Seney. In Insolvent,7 the sitter is desperately rummaging through his pocket for coins to indulge in a much-desired pint of beer in the center of the picture, whose access is forbidden by the attitude of an old female publican who, according to Kevin O’Neill, could well have been Polly Gaffney, whose existence was asserted in The Westmeath Guardian.8 Consequently, the sitter visible in Waiting for a Bite and in so many pictures could have been one of the publican’s relatives called Tom Gaffney,9 or another inhabitant of Clonava called Paddy Cox, as suggested by the title that the artist gave to an artwork in which he is seen again but this time writing: Paddy Cox’s Love Letter.10 Griffith’s valuation actually listed ‘Martin Cox’ and ‘John Cox’ as two inhabitants in Clonava,11 where Nicol had his studio built in

1862. In fact, the protagonist of Waiting for a Bite could well have been a neighbour of the artist, as he is always represented in the area of Clonava, fishing on Derravaragh Lake, as is the case here, or hunting the fields of County Westmeath, as in Missed It,12 a picture with which Waiting for a Bite forms a pair.

In both compositions, a sense of leisure, happiness and peace is rendered by the artist. The fisherman’s joyful attitude invites the viewer to pause too, like him, and to admire the surroundings, the water, the grass along the shore, the fields in the background or the clouds painted in various shades of white, yellow and grey, announcing some rain after sunshine and thus, we all wait for the next take. According to the peasant’s wide-open eyes, it has just bitten the hook underwater, making his patient wishes come true.

The picture conveys perfectly all the sensations that a fisherman might have felt: the movement of the clouds allows us to imagine the wind, feel the fresh breeze, appreciate the moment of sunshine and even listen to the crackling of the wooden planks of his boat, meticulously painted by Nicol.

But ‘Cox’ was sometimes seen in more distressful situations, spending some less pleasant time in company of other tenants who actually lived in Clonava, such as James Blake: Blake and ‘Cox’ are thus both present in An Irish Deputation,13 anxiously waiting for the verdict of their landlord regarding their lease. Even in Waiting for a Bite, not everything is about the ‘locus amoenus’ or a depiction of a land of abundance, generously providing its dwellers with fish and water. The character’s worn out jacket and his open waistcoat, suggesting the lack of a few buttons, hint at the poverty in which such farmers lived.a As he painted Westmeath peasants, Nicol explored the fragility of tenants who lived at the mercy of their landlords, as in Paddy’s Mark,14 where ‘Cox’ is seen ratifying the document that would allow him to cultivate a patch of land. It echoed the very problem of land division in Ireland, where the land did not belong to those who worked on it and who could easily be evicted if they accumulated arrears, especially in the aftermath of the Great Famine (18471852), that Nicol had witnessed.

However, it is definitely a lighter mood which is depicted here, especially as the bright touches of yellow and beige of the loaf of bread attract our attention, thus representing the ‘punctum’ of the picture, defined by Barthes as a salient element in the composition arousing the curiosity and attention of the viewer, although it is not the main subject (or ‘studium’) in the image.15 It is true that bread is here of importance: it indicates, despite the ragged aspect of his clothes, that the angler does not lack food and in addition, it underlines the play on words suggested by the title, Waiting for a Bite.

Actually, the angler is waiting for a fish to bite his hook, while he himself is waiting for a good bite in this appetising bread, whose fluffy, sweet and soft texture is emphasised by the position of the hand holding it, open enough not to crush it, but whose fingers still hold it firmly to prevent it from falling into the water. The fisherman’s hands are beautifully painted here, and his nails are carefully detailed.

Victorians appreciated pictures which, just like Waiting for a Bite, were meticulously finished, so that it quickly joined the collection of Henry Mason, of Bingley (Manchester) and passed through the hands of several prestigious art dealers, including ‘Alex. Reid & Lefevre Ltd., King Street, St. Jame's London’, and is now being presented in James and Therese Gorry’s gallery. Waiting for a Bite is representative of Nicol’s success, style and favourite subjects, illustrating

the daily life of the peasants who lived in County Westmeath in the mid-nineteenth century. Nicol actually painted this sitter fishing and eating twice, as there is a smaller version of Waiting for a Bite which is called The Optimistic Angler and which sold in 2005 for £5,760.16 The humour which made Nicol’s fame in Scotland, England and even in France or the United States, is exemplified in this subject: it is based on detailed emotions, puns, and situations. Here, a sense of good surprise is expressed by the character’s eyes and mouth while in other pictures, it is his posture which is humourous, as in The Day after the Fair, in which he is painfully sitting by the fire, his head covered with bandages and his comforting mother by his side.

The Day after the Fair was Nicol’s diploma picture for the Royal Scottish Academy, of which he was made an Associate in 1855 and a full Member by 1859, so that the artist himself chose to produce a picture with the same sitter as that painted in Waiting for a Bite, to be preserved in the permanent collection there. It indicates that he considered this type of portrait as illustrative of his best style. As such, the portrait of the angler will doubtlessly find a place of honour in the collection of an art lover interested in humour, fishing, portraiture, Irish history, peasant life and the Scottish school of art, to which Nicol proudly belonged.

Dr Amélie Dochy-Jacquard 1 Anon., ‘Leith; Fine Arts’, The Scotsman, 31 Dec. 1842, p. 2.

2 Erskine Nicol, Midday Rest, watercolour, 28 x 38 cm, 1868, private collection.

3 Ibid., Pat among the Old Masters, oil on canvas, 52 x 66 cm, 1864, private collection.

4 Ibid., His Favourite Brew, oil on canvas, 49 x 39 cm, 1869, private collection.

5 Ibid., Molly Brierly, oil painting, 56 x 80 cm, circa 1860, private collection.

6 Ibid., Bashful Suitor, oil on canvas, 41 x 63 cm, 1860s, private collection.

A pendant to this picture, called Don’t Provoke Me, shows the couple again but this time with the lady brooding by the fireside and her lover uttering complicated explanations. The painting is known under its reproduction in Anna Maria Carter Hall, Tales of Irish Life, London, 1909, p. 40. In His Own Fireside (oil on canvas by Nicol, 46 x 62 cm, 1855, private collection), an earlier picture, the sitter is mending some clothes under the amused look of a woman peering through wooden planks. In The Finishing Touch, he is seen on his threshold, his wife tying his bowtie and his children driving two pigs in the background (oil on canvas, 102 x 81 cm, 1867, private collection).

7 Ibid., Insolvent, oil on canvas, 51 x 66 cm, 1862, private collection.

8 The Westmeath Guardian, Jun. 1862, quoted by Kevin O’Neill, Eve’s Meadow, Erskine Nicol and Clonave Island, County Westmeath in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, Certificate in Local History, supervised by Denis A. Cronin and submitted on 18 May 2017, University of Maynooth, p. 17.

9 Ibid., p. 31.

10 Erskine Nicol, Paddy Cox’s Love Letter, watercolour, 31 x 46 cm, 1864.

On the contrary, in Good News (oil on canvas, 66 x 51 cm, 1866, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), the farmer receives a letter and reads it out loud, as indicated by his open lips (the painting is reproduced in Anna Maria Carter Hall, Tales of Irish Life, London, 1909, p. 264).

11 ‘Valuation of Tenements’, County of Westmeath, Barony of Moygoish, Union of Mullingar, in Richard Griffith, General Valuation of Rateable Property in Ireland, County Westmeath, Dublin, 1854, p. 24.

12 Erskine Nicol, Missed It!, oil on canvas, 75 x 57 cm, 1866, private collection.

13 Ibid., An Irish Deputation, oil on canvas, 104 x 143 cm, 1865, private collection.

14 Ibid., Paddy’s Mark, oil on canvas, 62 x 83 cm, 1868, private collection.

This work was so successful that Nicol painted another larger version entitled Signing the New Lease, oil on canvas, 122 x 93 cm, 1868, New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester, England.

15 Roland Barthes, La Chambre Claire, Paris, Gallimard, 1980, p. 49.

16 Erskine Nicol, The Optimistic Angler, oil on canvas laid down on board, 49.5 x 37.4 cm (19.5 x 14.75 in.), sold on 12 May 2005 at Christie’s, London, for £5,760.

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Jack B. Yeats R.H.A. 1871-1957 This drawing was made by Jack B. Yeats to be reproduced in A Broadside, the four page publication of image and verse that was produced by his sisters, Lily and Lollie Yeats, at the Cuala Press from 1908 to 1915. It was used as an illustration to Douglas Hyde’s love poem, ‘I shall not die for Thee’, published in the February 1914 number. Black line creates simple, primitive forms that draw on the humour and sentiment of the text. The image was easily reproduced as a line block print and hand-coloured.

The protagonist in the poem is shown, with head in hand, writing his verse as he imagines the beauty and charm of his lover. He cuts a romantic figure, with his long hair and round earring, and his colourful dress of red jacket and blue hose.

A familiar composition from Yeats’s later paintings, the image plays on the frame of the window and the interaction of interior and exterior space. A view of distant mountains can be seen through the opening. The dark stone walls of the interior are constructed from interlocking lines of black ink. The deep window ledge serves as the poet’s desk. A tankard made in the fashionable style of the Arts and Crafts movement stands on the ledge, a subtle reference to modern times.

The work was acquired in 1920 by the celebrated writer and sur-

Nathaniel Hone R.H.A. 1831-1917 Owning land and having a farm, Hone had a favoured subject-matter: cattle in pasture, close to hand. Here he makes studies of five cows, some brown, most brown and white, lying in the grass in different postures. Some are seen in profile, others with their backs to us; some looking at the viewer, others looking away, and one resting its head on the ground. These are clearly studies which could be used in the artist’s larger paintings of cattle in the pasture. Hone treats each subject individually, leaving white canvas around it, as he did in his sketch of hay carts (NGI, cat. no. 1539).

Dr Julian Campbell

21. Jack B. Yeats R.H.A. 1871-1957 I Shall Not Die for Thee Pen, ink and watercolour on paper 10.5 x 14.2 Exhibited: 1920 Drawings and Pictures of Life in the West of Ireland, Mills Hall, Dublin (35) Provenance: Oliver St. John Gogarty by decent to his son Oliver D.

Gogarty, Gorry Gallery Literature: H. Pyle, The Different Worlds of Jack B. Yeats. His

Cartoons and Illustrations, Irish Academic Press, 1994 p.268.

geon, Oliver St. John Gogarty, who was a collector and admirer of Yeats’s work. It remained in the family’s possession for many decades before being attained by the present owner.

Dr. Róisín Kennedy

Walter Fredrick Osborne R.H.A. 1859-1903 At the close of July 1901 Dermod O’Brien wrote to congratulate his close friend Walter Osborne on the sale of a picture. Osborne replied, jesting that ‘the sale of a picture is a much rarer event in a family than an engagement so of course I feel bloated with pride.

The Children after all were adopted by the Committee of Preston Art Gallery.’ The ‘Children’ were those that populated his Summertime, purchased for £200 at the Royal Academy Annual Exhibition by the Preston City Art Gallery (now The Harris Museum) in 1901.

This drawing of two girls seated on a garden bench with a young boy’s profile in the background is a preliminary study for that very picture. Whilst Summertime was doubtless completed in Osborne’s St Stephen’s Green Studio in the spring of 1901, the principal body of work along with the accompanying sketches, including this one, were executed at his home in Castlewood Avenue in the summer of 1900.

Gearóid Arthur Hayes

22. Nathaniel Hone R.H.A. 1831-1917 Cows Oil on canvas laid down on board 25.4 x 35.9 Literature: Gorry Gallery June 2018, Catalogue no. 35 Provenance: The Artist’s studio. Bodkin: 375,

Private collection

23. Walter Fredrick Osborne R.H.A. 1859-1903 Study for Summertime, 1900 Pencil on paper 25 x 34 Exhbited: Gorry Gallery exhibition of 18th-21st century Irish

paintings 2008, ex.no. 51 Provenance: Sophia Mallin, step sister of Violet Stockley, Walter

Osbornes niece (letter of authenticity on reverse)

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24. Thomas Rose Miles 1844-1916 Clew Bay, Connemara Oil on canvas 51 x 76 Signed, also signed and inscribed verso

25. William Sadler II c.1782-1839 Dublin Port with Poolbeg Lighthouse Oil on wood 13.5 x 23.5

26. Charles MacIver Grierson R.I., P.S. 1864-1939 Collecting the Local Catch Watercolour on paper 36 x 51.5 Signed and dates 1903

Charles MacIver Grierson 1864-1939 Charles MacIver Grierson was a painter of literary and genre subjects. Born in Cobh, County Cork, his father was manager of the Cunard Steamship Company. Grierson studied with the architect William Henry Hill before attending Cork School of Art and then Westminster School of Art in London. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, the Royal Academy and the Royal Hibernian Academy.

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Jeremiah Hodges Mulcahy, A.R.H.A. 1804-1889

27. Jeremiah Hodges Mulcahy A.R.H.A. 1804-1889 Wooded River Landscape near Kerry Oil on canvas 86.4 x 130.2 Signed and dated 1865 Provenance: Christies London 2006;

Private collection

A native of Limerick, Jeremiah Hodges Mulcahy was born in 1804 and is best known for his oeuvre of topographically significant landscapes. Although little is known of Mulcahy’s training as an artist, his earliest known work in oil, dated 1823, is a depiction of Leda and the Swan from Greek mythology, based on a print after Vieira Lusitano (1699-1783), supporting the view that he learned from prints (Anne Crookshank and The Knight of Glin, The Watercolours of Ireland, p.171). In 1839, he became a member of the Freemasons of Ireland at Eden Lodge, Limerick, where he developed connections for the purpose of enhancing his career and acquiring patronage. Later patrons would include the Earl and Countess of Dunraven, the Knight of Glin, and Augustus Stafford O’Brien of Cratloe Woods, County Clare (Edel Casey, The Dictionary of Irish Biography, Online).

In 1842, Mulcahy opened a School of Painting at 19 Catherine Street, Limerick ‘with the object…of developing native talent hitherto dormant for want of suitable instruction’ (Walter G. Strickland, A Dictionary of Irish Artists). In the hope of achieving his aim ‘Mulcahy was prepared to teach every branch of the art, both in oils, watercolours, sepia, Indian ink and pencil drawings’ (Limerick Reporter, 25 January 1842), but the School ran into financial difficulties, most significantly during the years of the Great Famine. During this time he became an Associate Member of the Royal Hibernian Academy, and exhibited twenty-six works there between 1843 and 1878, including views of Dublin, Kerry, Limerick, and Wicklow. In 1862, following the untimely death of his wife, he closed the School and moved to Dublin. He continued to paint after that time, exhibiting throughout Ireland, and at the British Institution and London Art Union in England. Mulcahy died on Christmas Day in 1889 at his home at 11 Avondale Terrace, Harold’s Cross.

In Christie’s catalogue entry for this painting, sold in London in 2006, Edel Casey wrote: The present [picture is] among Mulcahy’s finest Irish views in terms of colour and composition. Evident in the [view] are elements of Romanticism combined with Mulcahy’s Dutch influences. [The picture], which may show a view in Kerry, where the artist painted extensively in the 1860s, exudes the sense of awe, evident among the tourists in the scene, and exemplifies scenes of early

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tourism in Ireland. An elegantly dressed couple stand to look over the landscape at the waterfall and mountain, partially hidden by Mulcahy’s distinctive leafy trees. While a horse and cart wait on the roadside, another couple appear sitting on the roadside wall.

The atmosphere of this peaceful but seemingly busy scenic area is enhanced by the addition of a scene on the river edge where a man has fallen on the rocky ground, his hat just fallen off behind, with two men coming to his assistance. In the left foreground a group of men appear deep in discussion most likely about the flora, fauna or geology of the area. The view may show a group of antiquarians on a tour of the countryside. Many antiquarian, scientific and cultural societies were established during the period such as the Royal Irish Academy to create an interest and promote the study of Ireland’s landscape and cultural past.

28. Robert Richard Scanlan fl.1826- 1876 Capt. William Rogers Killigrew Troop, 2nd Cornwall Yeomanry Cavalry 1823 Pencil and watercolour on paper 29.5 x 38.3 Signed, also with original labels verso

29. John Laffan 1922-2007 Charlemont Street Bridge, Dublin c.1916 Oil on canvas 56 x 66 Signed and inscribed with title verso

30. John Laffan 1922-2007 Keating Opens the Exhibition Oil on board 54 x 67.5 Signed and dated 1946, also inscribed with title verso

John Laffan 1922-2007 John Laffan was born in Brisbane to Irish parents who returned to Dublin in 1933. Between 1938 and 1944 be studied at Dublin’s Metropolitan School of Art under Maurice MacGonigal and Seán Keating, winning the Taylor Price on three occasions and after the war lived for a period in Spain. His brother, George, was a noted sculptor. Laffan exhibited Dublin views, portraits and figurative sub-

jects at the Royal Hibernian Academy between 1943 and 1960 also showing at the Oireachtas Art Exhibition and in 1975 with the Independent Artists. Among his sitters was Seán Ó’Faoláin (Crawford Art Gallery, Cork), the architect Michael Scott (private collection) and numerous Abbey actors. Included in his depiction of Seán Keating opening an exhibition (No. 31), is the writer Benedict Kiely, who the year before had been appointed critic of the Irish independent, and the American aesthete (and Dublin character) Kevin Monaghan.

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31. Thérèse McAllister Two Pears and an Orange Oil on canvas, laid down on board 15.5 x 15.5 Signed with Initials

32. Thérèse McAllister Christmas Still Life Oil on canvas, board 12.5 x 20.5 Signed

33. Thérèse McAllister Forest Fruit Oil on canvas, laid down on board 15.5 x 15.5 Signed with Initials

Thérèse McAllister Thérèse McAllister is an Irish artist who studied at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, before continuing her training as a painter in Florence. While there she met the Italian artist Pietro Annigoni, who encouraged her to enrol in the studio of Nerina Simi. Studying under Simi, she refined her drawing technique and learnt the skills of painting in the classical tradition. Thérèse has exhibited extensively in Ireland and abroad.

Her paintings are in many art collections worldwide.

35. Kenny McKendry Last Light, Antrim Hills Oil on linen laid on board 18 x 27 Signed

34. Kenny McKendry Starry Night, Murlough Bay Oil on linen laid on board 19.5 x 14 Signed

Kenny McKendry, born 1964 BA Hons University of Brighton.

36. Kenny McKendry From Magherintemple Lodge Oil on linen laid on board 18 x 27 Signed

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Trained as an illustrator, Kenny McKendry spent the first twelve years of his professional career creating leading book covers for Pan, Penguin, Mandarin and Pentagram Books amongst others.

Returning to Ireland he quickly gained many portrait commissions including Sir James Galway, Noble Laureate John Hume, Ciaran Hinds, Sir David Watson and Lord Bannside. Now represented by the London Mayfair Gallery and the Fine Art Commissions Ltd, McKendry is an annual exhibitor with the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the Mall in London and the RUA Belfast. Along side his portrait career McKendry often returns to his first love of the Irish Landscape, included in the collections of HRH Princess Anne, Corpus Christi College Oxford, P Burns Collection Boston, the Phoenix Art Museum and the Arts Council of N Ireland amongst others.

37. Gearóid Arthur Hayes Tidal Rock, Maretimo Oil on canvas 13 x 17 Signed

40. Letitia Hamilton R.H.A. 1878-1964 Monte Amiata from Sienna Oil on wood 19.5 x 26 Signed with initals, also signed and inscribed verso

38. Gearóid Arthur Hayes Mid Summer Pasture Oil on canvas 17 x 20.5 Signed

41. J. Birbeck c.1888 Killarney Painted porcelain plaque 16.3 x 21.1 Signed and inscribed verso

39. Gearóid Arthur Hayes Winter Dawn at Seapoint Oil on canvas 15 x 22 Signed

Gearóid Arthur Hayes Gearóid Arthur Hayes, born 1980, Pery Square, Limerick, was educated at Clongowes Wood College before going on to read Law and Business at UCD. After graduating he moved to Florence to study Fine Art and Italian at the Accademia Italiana. In 2004 he was offered a place at the prestigious Atelier of Charles H. Cecil. It was there that he received his classical training in painting and sculpture before becoming an instructor at the school.

Recipient of the James Adams Award at the R.H.A. for self-portrait in 2011. In 2018 he completed his MPhil at Trinity College Dublin and is currently preparing material for a PhD on Walter Frederick Osborne. Hayes continues to combine a fervent interest in plein air landscape with a thriving a portrait practice.

42. J. Birbeck c.1888 Sligo Abbey, Ireland Painted porcelain plaque 16.3 x 21.1 Signed and inscribed verso

J. Birbeck c.1888 James Birbeck, from the distinguished Birbeck family, headed by the father Joseph. Coalport or Copeland period c.1870-80. Typical of his earlier work.

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43. James Francis Danby 1816-1875 Wooden Walls of England: Man o War anchored in an Estuary at Sunset 1872 Oil on canvas 71 x 106.5 Signed and dated 1872 Provenance: Thomas Pemberton, Heathfield Hall, Handsworth, Birmingham;

His sale, Christie’s, London, 30 April 1874, lot 87 (43gns to

James Watson) Berwick House, Shropshire

James Francis Danby 1816-1875 At a sale held by Christies on the 30th April 1874, of the collection of Thomas Pemberton of Heathfield Hall, Birmingham, there were nine paintings by Francis Danby, sixteen by his son James, and one by his second son Thomas.

The collector James Watson acquired eight works at that sale, including this work, The Wooden Walls of England.

Depicting two men o’ war at anchor, with smaller craft plying back and forth, this is one of a number of paintings by James Francis Danby depicting naval ships on the river Thames, near the naval college at Greenwich. In this instance, the twin domes of the Naval College are not visible, as they are in other paintings by Danby of this stretch of the river, but the number of church towers suggest it is a view near Greenwich. Danby also painted views further up the Thames, at Westminster and at other locations such as the Medway near Chatham Dockyards, Southend, Exmouth and Scarborough.

On the left of this dramatic sunset scene, a three-masted 90-gun

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naval ship of the line lies at anchor, its sails spread out to dry.

Behind is a hulk, an old ship taken out of service, its masts cut and converted into cranes to raise and lower stores into the hold.

In the background, smoke rises from chimneys of houses on the shore, shrouding the rooftops in a haze, tinged pink by the setting sun. In front of the 90-gun ship a ship’s longboat is being rowed across the river. To the right, another naval ship lies at anchor, with smaller vessels alongside.

The son of Francis Danby A.R.A (1793-1861), James F. Danby followed his father in painting Romantic scenes with dramatic weather conditions, often featuring sunsets with shipping, or shipwrecks. James Francis used the red disc of the setting sun as the focal point for compositions that brought together the reflection of sun on sea, and the masts and rigging of sailing ships silhouetted against clouds tinged with red. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1842 to 1876, the Royal Hibernian Academy from 1849 to 1871, as well as at the British Institution and the Society of British Artists.

Peter Murray

Henry Begley c.1819-1895 Henry Begley was a Dublin genre and landscape painter, whose works Strickland recorded as having 'possessed merit, but … are now forgotten.' Giving his address at 8, Seville Place, Begley exhibited twenty-seven works at the Royal Hibernian Academy between 1862 and 1871, during which time he worked as a Clerk of the Court of Probate in Dublin. Moving to Limerick in 1871, Begley became the Principal Registrar of the Probate Court in the city. He continued his work as an artist, exhibiting a further twelve works at the Royal Hibernian Academy between 1877 and 1890, before his death in 1895.

44. Henry Begley c.1819-1895 The Cotter’s Daughter Oil on canvas 51.5 x 41 Signed and dated 1869 Exhibited: Royal Hibernian Acadmey 1869, no. 158

45. Bea Orpen H.R.H.A. 1913-1980 Woodshed Pencil and gouache on paper 18.5 x 23.5 Signed

46. J. J. Tuite 1856 Athcarne Castle Co. Meath Pen, ink and wash on paper 8 x 12.2

47. J. J. Tuite 1856 Donaghmore Tower, Co. Meath Pen, ink and wash on paper 8 x 12.2

48. J. J. Tuite 1856 Dangan Castle, Co. Meath Pen, ink and wash on paper 8 x 12.2

Exhibited: Cat. no. 13, 14, 15 exhibited in

Gorry Gallery, June 2009 Provenance: These drawings formed part of a

bound volume “Picturesque

Ancient Castles in Ireland”, 1856;

Private collection Literature: Gorry Gallery June 2009, Cat. no. 40

Exhibited: Cat. no. 13, 14, 15 exhibited in

Gorry Gallery, June 2009 Provenance: These drawings formed part of a bound

volume “Picturesque Ancient Castles in

Ireland”, 1856;

Private collection Literature: Gorry Gallery June 2009, Cat. no. 48

Exhibited: Cat. no. 13, 14, 15 exhibited in

Gorry Gallery, June 2009 Provenance: These drawings formed part of a

bound volume “Picturesque

Ancient Castles in Ireland”, 1856;

Private collection Exhibited: Gorry Gallery June 2009, Cat, no. 49

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Index of Artists artist

28

page no .

cat . no

George Barret R.A. 2, 3

1

Richard Brydges Beechey H.R.H.A. 12-14

15, 16

Henry Begley 27

44

James Birbeck 25

41, 42

Adam Buck 11

13, 14

Charles Collins 4, 5

2

John Henry Campbell 8, 9

8-10

James Francis Danby 26

43

Dupré 10

11

Charles MacIver Grierson R.I., P.S. 21

26

Hugh Douglas Hamilton 7

6

Letitia Hamilton R.H.A. 25

40

Joseph Patrick Haverty R.H.A. 15

17

Gearóid Arthur Hayes 25

37-39

Howard Eaton Helmick R.B.A. 16

18

Nathaniel Hone R.H.A. 20

22

John Laffan 23

29, 30

Thérèse McAllister 24

31-33

Kenny McKendry 24

34-36

Thomas Rose Miles 21

24

Jeremiah Hodges Mulcahy A.R.H.A. 22

27

George Mullins 11

12

Erskine Nicol R.S.A., A.R.A. 17-19

19, 20

James Arthur O’Connor 6

3

Bea Orpen H.R.H.A. 27

45

Walter Fredrick Osborne R.H.A. 20

23

Joseph Peacock R.H.A. 7

7

William Sadler II 6, 21

4, 5, 25

Robert Richard Scanlan 22

28

J. J. Tuite 27

46-48

Jack B. Yeats R.H.A. 20

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Acknowledgements We are grateful to the following for their kind assistance in the preparation of this exhibition: Christopher Ashe, Gillian Buckley, Dr Paul Caffrey, Dr Julian Campbell, Mary Davies, Dr Amélie Dochy-Jacquard, Gearóid Arthur Hayes, Dr Róisín Kennedy, Dr Ruth Kenny, Dr Claudia Kinmonth M.R.I.A., William Laffan, Logan Morse, Emily Mulcahy Cullen, Susan Mulhall, Peter Murray and Daniel Sheppard

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gorry gallery 20 Molesworth Street, Dublin 2 +353 (0)1 679 5319 gorrygallery@icloud.com www.gorrygallery.ie exhibition opening times Monday–Saturday 12–5pm Catalogue design by Ros Woodham ros@alkabir.org Printing by Print Run Limited