GORRY GALLERY
59. William Bate fl.1799-1845 ‘Portrait of an Elizabethan Lady’ Enamel oval 5.4 x 4.6 Signed and dated 1830 verso Set in its’ original ormolu frame (Illustrated actual size)
Dublin miniature painter. Exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1799 until 1827. Held the appointment of ‘Painter in Enamel to the Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of York.
FRONT COVER: Jan Van Huchtenburg 1647-1733 (detail) Catalogue Number: 1 © Gorry Gallery
GORRY GALLERY requests the pleasure of your company at the private view and sale of
An Exhibition of 17th - 21st Century Irish Paintings On Thursday, 15th June, 2017 Wine 6.00 p.m.
This exhibition can be viewed prior to the opening by appointment also on Tuesday and Wednesday 13th and 14th June from 11.30 a.m. - 5.30 p.m. and on the day of the opening.
www.gorrygallery.ie
All measurements in this catalogue are in centimetres, (height precedes width).
15th June - 29th June 2017
1. Jan van Huchtenburg 1647-1733
‘The Battle of the Boyne’ Oil on canvas 103.7 x 149.5 Title inscribed on reverse of the old lining canvas
For the weight of symbolism that has subsequently accrued to the events of 1st (or, in the new calendar 12th) July 1690, the Battle of the Boyne fought between King James II and his son-in-law, William of Orange, was something of an anticlimactic affair. Although over sixty thousand men converged on the Boyne at Oldbridge – with a noticeable, but far from overwhelming, numerical advantage in favour on William’s side – casualties were relatively modest, and the Jacobite army survived to fight again at Aughrim. However, the technical defeat inflicted was greatly exacerbated by James’s decision to flee the battlefield for Dublin and then France handing victory to the invading force. Facts have never got in the way of a good story and the legend of William on his white charger (in fact he was mounted on a black horse) fighting for religious liberty and the Protestant succession is belied by the celebration of his victory in the Vatican and the Te Deum sung in the Catholic imperial capital of Vienna. The battle has been often commemorated in art, and, indeed, still is in murals in East Belfast. This major rediscovery is one of two paintings of the battle by the Dutch Page 2 – Gorry Gallery – June 2017
artist Jan van Huchtenburg. The companion piece, now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, was in the Dutch Royal Collection at the very beginning of the nineteenth century whence it was transferred to the Amsterdam museum. The Rijksmuseum picture shows the scene on the opposite side of the river. Van Huchtenburg, one of the leading Dutch battle painters of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, honed his craft working for Franz Van der Meulen in the Manufacture des Gobelins in Paris, where, ironically, his principal commissions were celebrations of Louis XIV’s battles in the Low Countries. In 1670 Huchtenburg was back in Holland living in Haarlem and after the death of Philips Wouwerman became the leading painter of cavalry skirmishes and other military engagements. He was patronised by Prince Eugene of Savoy and by William of Orange himself.
Jan van Huchtenburg 1647-1733 ‘The Battle of the Boyne between Kings James II and William III’ Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
Compared to the 1693 painting of the battle by Van Huchtenburg’s contemporary Jan Wyck, who may have had access to a drawing done on the spot by Dirk Maas, (National Gallery of Ireland), van Huchtenburg brings a degree of poetic license to the depiction of the battle.
An Exhibition of 17th-21st Century Irish Paintings
2. Samuel Frederick Brocas c.1792-1847
‘A View of Askeaton, County Limerick’ Oil on unlined canvas in original frame 43.6 x 67.3
Literature: See William Laffan (ed.), Painting Ireland, Topographical Views from Glin Castle (Tralee, 2016) pp. 77-78 Though most famous for his views of Dublin, Samuel Frederick Brocas also painted the townscapes of provincial Ireland, notably County Limerick. The present work is a noticeably more ambitious and fully realised view of Askeaton, County Limerick, relating to a similar but smaller view of the same scene by Brocas in the collection of the late Desmond FitzGerald, Knight of Glin. The view is from the same angle on a point close to the River Deel and, like the Glin picture, shows the ruined Desmond Tower (built in 1199), the Constable Tower and the roofless Great Banqueting Hall. The castle was abandoned to the English under William Pelham in 1580 – its walls blown up by the fleeing defenders – after the fall of Carrigafoyle Castle in the Desmond Rebellion. The Castle was taken by Confederate forces in 1642 and finally destroyed ten years later. Today the ruins of the Castle and Franciscan Friary are still remarkably impressive while the site of the Limerick Hell Fire Club built in about 1740 (possibly by John Aheron) adds a disreputable allure. ‘As architecture, the castle complex beguiled by its size, as a ruin it seduced by the complexity of its outlines, the exposure An Exhibition of 17th-21st Century Irish Paintings
of the interior vaults, fireplaces and deep window recesses of the Desmond Tower, and by that tower’s dominating presence.’ (Peter Harbison and Judith Hill in William Laffan (ed.), Painting Ireland, Topographical Views from Glin Castle (Tralee, 2016) p. 77.) In addition, however, to its topographical and antiquarian interest, the view charms for its depiction of everyday Irish life continuing within the ruins of Irish history. Today Askeaton is home to a festival of contemporary art. Samuel Frederick Brocas was perhaps the most talented of a family of six artists active in Dublin in the early nineteenth century. Proceeded by his father, Henry, and uncle, James, three of Samuel Frederick’s brothers were also painters. After a successful spell at the Dublin Society School, where he won a medal for flower painting in 1801, for etching in 1802 and figure drawing in 1807, he enjoyed a successful career as a landscape painter and his works, according to Strickland, ‘possess considerable merit’. He exhibited in Dublin from 1804 and after the foundation of the RHA, showed works at the annual exhibitions for almost two decades up to 1847, the year of his death. June 2017
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3. George Mounsey Wheatley Atkinson 1806-1884 ‘Shipping in Cork Harbour’ Oil on canvas 86 x 132.5 In original Irish gilt frame from Cork
Although unsigned, this painting by George Mounsey Wheatley Atkinson is a significant addition to the artist’s known oeuvre. Dating from the 1840’s, the canvas depicts several ships, at anchor, under way and lying-to, in the stretch of water between Haulbowline Island and the town of Cove (Cobh), in Cork Harbour. The principal vessel, a large Royal Navy ship of the line, is depicted in some detail, with rigging and spars clearly delineated. All sails have been removed; the ship lies at anchor, barepoled. Carrying one hundred and twenty guns, with three decks, this ‘first rate’ vessel is not named. However it can be tentatively identified, as it closely resembles a ship depicted in another work by Atkinson, An event in the History of Ireland – Two Admirals in command and three first-rate ships in the Cove of Cork (private collection). This latter canvas, dating from 1843, records a visit by the Royal Navy’s White Squadron to Cork in September of that year. Under the command of Admiral Bowles, the squadron consisted of the warships Caledonia, Camperdown and St. Vincent. Both canvases are of similar size and it is likely that the present work depicts one of the vessels in the White Squadron painting, HMS St. Vincent, carrying one hundred and twenty guns. Page 4 – Gorry Gallery – June 2017
Camperdown and Caledonia were both one hundred and four gun ships. In the present work, there is one first-rate ship, the other vessels depicted being smaller and of different types. They include a passenger-carrying steam brig that approaches from Haulbowline Island and a barque lying at anchor in the distance. To the right of the canvas, a sailing brig is lying-to, sails limp in the windless evening air. In the foreground, a pinnace, six sailors bending to the oars, ferries the commanding officer, identifiable by his cocked hat and epulettes, over to the sailing brig. To the left of the canvas can be seen figures standing on the quay at Haulbowline Island. Other vessels, including a yacht, a steam packet, and two square-riggers under sail, appear in the distance. Projecting from the forward part of the first-rate ship, two long spars are suspended above the water. These were probably employed both to facilitate small vessels coming alongside, and to fend off larger vessels that might be swept off course by wind or tide. However, the scene depicted by Atkinson is one of calm, with little or no wind, the sea unruffled by waves. An Exhibition of 17th-21st Century Irish Paintings
Atkinson was a prolific artist, and the present painting is one of his best works. At the Cork Art Union exhibition of 1841, he exhibited five works, all representing, the Cork Examiner reported, different views of our noble harbour of Cove, in storm, in calm, in haze, and in sunshine: together with brigs, schooners, cutters, and steamers in every position and circumstance. His vessels are exquisitely perfect; his sea, whether in storm or calm, is admirable. [Cork Examiner, 26th Sept. 1841, p. 2, col. 5] The following year, he showed eight paintings, including an Eastern View of Cork Harbour, Two Frigates Beating out of Cork Harbour, A Steamship in A Storm, and The River Steamers. Two moonlight pieces, and an evening view of Cove induced the critic of the Cork Examiner to wax lyrical on ‘blue jackets, and cutlasses and cuttings-out, and hurricanes weathered’ before finishing up with a resounding “Hurra, hurra, hurra! Mr. Atkinson must be a true painter; he makes us absolutely poetical; and, to make a critic poetical is no easy matter.” [Cork Examiner, 3rd Oct. 1842] At least two of these paintings were shown also at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1842, where Atkinson exhibited for the first time. Over the following three years, he was to show a total of twenty works at the RHA, but apparently did not meet with much commercial success. In the 1843 Cork Art Union exhibition, his White Squadron painting was well received, and it is likely that the present painting, A First Rate Ship and Other Vessels in Cork Harbour dates from this period.
of ships and their rigging, Atkinson’s painting can be compared with the work of American painters Francis Silva and Fitz Hugh Lane. Their outstanding reputations highlight the neglect of this skilled Irish artist, whose omission from standard reference works on maritime painting is inexcusable. A number of works by Atkinson have been acquired in recent years by the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork. These were included in a major exhibition of maritime paintings, held in 2005, held at the Custom House in Cork, where there is also a good collection of his work. Atkinson is represented in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London; in Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut and in the Peabody Museum, in Salem, Massachusetts. Peter Murray
In the 1849 exhibition, the politician and author John F. Maguire spoke on behalf of the artist: It is a very rare thing that an artist comes to his profession with so much real knowledge suited to the peculiar branch to which he devotes himself, as Mr. Atkinson possessed when he first devoted himself to painting. For many years of his life, nay since his boyhood, he had journeyed on the great deep; he had beheld the sea in all its phases, in its terrible grandeur as in its placid beauty; to his mind every craft that floats upon the waters is familiar--he is conversant with the rig of the largest frigate, as of the smallest pilot boat, and knows every block and rope and spar that form that beautiful yet intricate symmetry so puzzling to the eye of a landsman. [Cork Examiner, January 22, 1845, p.2, col.4] A one-time ship’s carpenter, inspector of shipping and self-taught painter, Atkinson earned a passable living depicting Cork’s maritime environs. His paintings often commemorate notable events in Cork Harbour, for example the 1849 visit of Queen Victoria. In his acute observation of weather conditions, of sea, clouds and sky, and also in the accuracy of his rendering An Exhibition of 17th-21st Century Irish Paintings
June 2017
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4. Alfred Elmore R.A., H.R.H.A. 1815-1881 ‘A Greek Ode’ Oil on canvas 123 x 90.5 Signed and dated ’18AElmore.79.’
Exhibited: Royal Academy 1879 Number 213 Provenance: By descent to the artist’s daughter The Executors of Alfred Elmore R.A. Christie’s, London, 5 May 1883, lot 136 (250 gns to Permain). With Roy Miles Painting, London. Literature: The Athenaeum, 1879, p. 571 Ralph N. James, Painters and their Works, London 1896, Vol. 1, p. 348 Christopher Wood, Olympian Dreamers, London 1983, illustrated p. 222 Although less well-known in Ireland than some other nineteenth century Irish and Cork artists who made their careers in London, Alfred Elmore led a fascinating life, and had a busy and successful career. His work is often included in historical exhibitions in England, and a renewed interest in his work has been pursued in Ireland, most recently in the exhibition of his alluring painting Beppo, 1843, at the Gorry Gallery in 2015, and its subsequent acquisition by the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, joining the Elmore painting A Classical Beauty, already in the Crawford collection.1 Page 6 – Gorry Gallery – June 2017
Alfred Elmore was born in Clonakility, Co. Cork into a mixed Irish Republican and English military background in 1815. His mother’s father Dr. William Callanan had been a leading member of the United Irishmen in West Cork in the 1798 period, while Elmore’s father had served as a surgeon in the Peninsular Wars in Spain, and had settled in Clonakilty to set up a linen business. Elmore’s childhood was spent in Clonakilty, and the presence of a painting of the Dead Christ, supposedly by Van Dyck, in his father’s collection, encouraged his interest in painting. An Exhibition of 17th-21st Century Irish Paintings
The Elmore family moved to London in 1827. Alfred made drawings in the British Museum, and became a student in the Royal Academy Schools in 1832. He also attended drawing lessons with the Clique, a group of talented RA students, who became some of the leading artists of the mid-Victorian period.2 Elmore undertook further studies in Paris, Germany and Rome. The Elmore family were friends with Irish statesman Daniel O’Connell, who commissioned a picture The Martyrdom of Thomas à Becket, 1840 by Elmore, and later presented it to St. Andrew’s Church, Dublin. Elmore became a successful painter of historical and literary subjects, which he exhibited at the British Institution and the R.A. He was elected an Associate of the R.A. in 1845, and a full member in 1857, and an Honorary Member of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1878. He made a visit to Algeria and possibly the Holy Land, in the 1860s. He was also a skilled watercolourist. A Greek Ode, painted in 1879, belongs to Elmore’s late ‘Classical’ period. Throughout his career much of his work had been marked by an eclecticism, influenced by various nineteenth century artists and movements, such as Romanticism, History Painting, Academicism, Orientalism, and Aestheticism, yet at the same time displaying his own styles and colour palette. During a period when historical, literary and social themes preoccupied many British artists, from the 1860s there was also a Classical revival among some leading English painters and sculptors, including Leighton, Watts, Alma-Tadema, Poynter and Albert Moore. As Julian Treuherz explains this: “was based on a new interpretation of Greek art as the expression of a harmonious, luxurious ideal of beauty in repose. In 1865 the Eglin Marbles were restored . . . at the British Museum and received renewed attention”.3 In 1867 Leighton travelled to Greece, stimulating his admiration for Greek Classical art and civilisation. Much of his subsequent work was inspired by Greek and Roman themes and figures, with an emphasis upon the clear representation of drapery. Elmore was caught up in this mood, moving away from the more Romantic, Theatrical or Realist styles of earlier pictures to a calmer, more Classical manner. A Greek Ode, 1879 depicts an attractive young couple in white Grecian costume reclining languorously upon a stone bench in front of the blue Mediterranean sea. The seated woman wears a white dress, with a loose, cream-coloured shawl and open sandals. She holds olive leaves in her fingers. The man reclines upon the wall behind her. He wears a tunic of a glowing green-blue and a straw hat hangs over his shoulders. He reads a sheet or scroll of paper. On the ground are objects: olive leaves, a fan, and a seven-stringed lyre, a musical instrument associated with Greece and the An Exhibition of 17th-21st Century Irish Paintings
Ancient World, while on the bench are a shining silver jug and copper bowls. Elmore’s title is poetic in allusion, an ode being a “lyric poem of exalted style and tone, often of varied or irregular metre.”4 In Classical mythology the lyre is associated with Hermes, Apollo and Orpheus, and symbolises musical and poetic inspiration and divine harmony. The goddess Athene was said to have invented the olive tree. It was a sacred tree associated with peace, fertility immortality and joy. Brides wore or carried olive leaves, symbolic of virginity and purity.5 Yet Elmore does not over-emphasise the symbolism, and the mood of the painting is calm and idealised, rather than exalted. Indeed the man reading the paper and the shiny copper and silver vessels, give the picture quite a modern feel. Behind the couple is a sea of deep blue, and a blue mountain or island, beneath a sky of gently-streaked cloud. As in Elmore’s painting Beppo, the figures and clothing are well modelled in a clear light. Yet, in spite of the Classicism of A Greek Ode, the paintwork is looser than in earlier pictures. In the stone or marble wall, for instance, the brushwork is visible, with touches of green and red colours echoing elsewhere in the picture. Elmore’s signature is visible on a stone block of the wall to the lower right. It is treated decoratively, with the letter ‘A’, and what appears to be a tall ‘T’, entwined with the ‘E’. A Greek Ode can be seen in the context of other pictures of figures in Greek costumes set against a backdrop of the Mediterranean, by artists such as Leighton and Poynter. The most direct influence may be the painting A Question, 1877 by Lawrence Alma-Tadema (Perez Simon Collection, Mexico) which show two lovers in white Greek costume reclining on a stone bench in front of the timeless blue Mediterranean sea, with the artist’s signature signed on a stone block near the lower edge. Julian Campbell References: 1. J. Campbell, Alfred Elmore. ‘Beppo’, in Exhibition of 18th-21st Century Irish Painting, Gorry Gallery, 2015. Other recent essays of Elmore include J. Campbell, ‘Elmore, Alfred’, in Figgis ed. Painting 1600-1900, RIA/Yale 2014; P. Murray, ed. Three Centuries of Irish Art, Crawford Art Gallery, Cork. 2014; C. de Bhailís, ‘Alfred Elmore. Behind the Scences’, Irish Arts Review, Autumn 2014; C. De Bhailís, ‘Alfred Elmore’s Religious Paintings’, in Clonakilty Historical and Archaeological Journal, vol. 1, 2015. 2. Among other members of the Clique were Dadd, Egg, Frith, O’Neil and Phillip. 3. J. Treuherz, Victorian Painting, London 1993, p. 136. 4. Pocket Oxford Dictionary, London, 1924, 1961, p. 544. 5. Jack Tresidder, The Complete Dictionary of Symbols in Myth, Art and Literature, London, 2004, p. 297, 354. The seven strings on the lyre were symbolic of the seven planets. 6. Other such Classic (Greek and Roman-inspired) pictures include On the Terrace by Edward Poynter; and Acme and Septimius, c.1868, by Frederick Leighton (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford). June 2017
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5. William Ashford, P.R.H.A. c.1746-1824
‘A View of Gibraltar’ Oil on canvas 50.8 x 91.8 Signed and dated 1775 and inscribed ‘from a sketch/ Chas Vallancy Esq’ Further inscribed on stretcher: ‘This excellent view of the Rock of Gibraltar was painted by Ashford for Sir John Irwin then Commander in Chief in Ireland from a drawing taken on the spot by Colonel Vallancy’ Provenance: Sir John Irwin (c.1727-1788); Thomas Gibson, by 1821; Parker Gallery London Exhibited: Cork Society for Promoting the Fine Arts, 1821, No. 43, Lent by Thomas Gibson Esquire Peter Murray, The Crawford Municipal Art Gallery (Cork, 1991) p. 201 Literature: Anne Crookshank, ‘A Life Devoted to Landscape Painting, William Ashford (c.1746-1824)’, Irish Arts Review Yearbook, 1995, p. 125
This early work by William Ashford showing the Rock of Gibraltar reminds how the artist’s introduction to Ireland was via the Ordnance Department of the military garrison. Under the patronage of Ralph Ward, Surveyor General of the Ordnance he served as Clerk to the Comptroller of the Laboratory section in Dublin Castle. The picture was painted as a reminder of his time there for Sir John Irwin who had served as Governor of Gibraltar between 1766-1768 and who, subsequently, as Commander in Chief in Ireland from 1775 to 1782, was Ashford’s ultimate boss. As the inscription attests, Ashford did not have to visit Gibraltar to take his view, instead he was supplied with a drawing taken on the spot by the military surveyor and antiquarian Colonel Charles Vallancey, who, though born in London, made his career in Ireland. Vallancey had studied at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich and was commissioned in the 10th Regiment of Foot in 1747. He was attached to the Royal Engineers and eventually rose to become a general. He was a proficient draughtsman, (drawing Page 8 – Gorry Gallery – June 2017
was taught at Woolwich, as a necessary skill for a military surveyor) and several of his drawings, for example of Lismore Castle and Ardmore Round Tower, County Waterford, were later copied by Gabriel Beranger. The Rock of Gibraltar had been ceded to Britain in 1713 under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht and just a few years after Ashford painted it, it withstood one of the longest sieges in British military history from June 1779 until February 1783. Gibraltar was a crucially important military foothold in continental Europe, guarding, as it does, the narrow straits leading into the Mediterranean, and Vallancey presumably served there. On his arrival in Ireland sometime before 1770 he would certainly have met Ashford through their joint work in the Ordnance Department but also through the shared patronage from William Burton Conyngham of Slane Castle, as both were involved in his antiquarian pursuits. Both men thrived in Ireland. An Exhibition of 17th-21st Century Irish Paintings
Vallancey in his writings ‘took up cudgels in defence of his adopted country and painted a picture of Ireland having a civilisation so ancient that it could only have been brought there by the Phoenicians’ (Peter Harbison, William Burton Conyngham, and his Irish Circle of Antiquarian Artists (2012) p. 11) while Ashford went on ‘to be the undisputed master of Irish landscape painting’ and eventually the founding President of the Royal Hibernian Academy (ibid. p. 29). Sir John Irwin for whom the picture was painted was born in Dublin in or about 1727. He enjoyed a distinguished military and political career and was known for his elegant manners and taste for good living. He was married three times, firstly to the youngest daughter of Hugh Henry of Straffan. Charles James Fox thought him a fop but ‘good-humoured’ and Sir Nathaniel Wraxall wrote, ‘It was impossible to possess finer manners, without any affectation, or more perfect good breeding’. He was particularly close to George III. One contemporary recalls how the king once said to him: ‘They tell me, Sir John, that you love a glass of wine’, to which the answer came ‘Those, Sir, who have so reported of me to your Majesty have done me great injustice; they should have said a bottle’ (Oxford, DNB).
Gibraltar served as the subject not just of this painting by Ashford, but also of a bizarrely extravagant centrepiece at a banquet Irwin gave in Dublin in 1781 for the Lord Lieutenant the 5th Earl of Carlisle, when he commissioned a barley sugar model of the Siege of Gibraltar for the immense sum of fifteen hundred pounds (ibid). This taste for the high life eventually led to huge debts and Irwin was forced into exile on the continent, firstly in Normandy then in Italy, though King George helped him out financially. It seems likely that his parlous financial situation forced Irwin to sell the picture recalling happier times as Governor of Gibraltar, and that it did not descend to either of the two children of his third marriage. Instead, it is next recorded in Cork some thirty years after Irwin’s death; presumably it had never left Ireland. In 1821 it was included in the sixth annual exhibition of the Cork Society for Promoting the Fine Arts where it was one of seventy-five works (out of a total of one hundred and twenty-eight paintings in the show) to come from the collection of Thomas Gibson Esq. Mostly Dutch old masters and works by British painters like Richard Wilson, it also included Irish landscape notably a Salmon Leap at Leixlip by James Arthur O’Connor and works by George Barret and John Henry Campbell.
6. George Barret Jnr. 1767-1842
‘An Arcadian Landscape with Figures’ Pencil and watercolour heightened with white on paper 45 x 75.5 An Exhibition of 17th-21st Century Irish Paintings
June 2017
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7. Jonathan Fisher 1735-1809
‘A View of the Canal between the Lakes of Killarney, from near Coleman’s Eye, the Entrance of the Upper Lake’ Oil on canvas 39.4 x 50.8
Provenance: Gorry Gallery, 1983, Catalogue No. 7, illustrated on front cover of the catalogue and in a private collection ever since Engraved by Pierre-Charles Canot (c.1710-77). A copy of the engraving, published in May 1770, is sold with the painting. Exhibited: Jonathan Fisher’s house, Great Ship Street, Dublin, November 1768; Society of Artists in Ireland, William Street, Dublin, 1769 (No. 26) Literature: Walter Strickland, A Dictionary of Irish Artists, 2 Vols (Dublin and London, 1913) vol. 1, p. 344 George Breeze (ed.), Society of Artists in Ireland, Index of Exhibits, 1765-80 (Dublin, 1985) p. 10 NOTE: The loan of this picture has been requested by the Irish Georgian Society for an exhibition next summer at the City Assembly House, South William Street, the original home of the Society of Artists where this picture was first exhibited almost exactly two hundred and fifty years ago. Although there were earlier attempts to record it’s majestic scenery (including by Mrs. Delany’s friend Letitia Bushe), it is fair to say that Jonathan Fisher put Killarney on the map. In November 1768 he advertised in Faulkner’s Dublin Journal that he had ‘spent the greatest part of last summer at Killarney taking views of the much admired lakes’ and that he proposed Page 10 – Gorry Gallery – June 2017
‘publishing by subscription six different prints of them to be engraved by the best artists in England’. Sketches that Fisher made in Kerry are preserved in the National Library of Ireland (as Crookshank and Glin noted ‘the condition of the sketchbooks almost seems to summon up the rain pattering on his paper’) and several of the original paintings from which the An Exhibition of 17th-21st Century Irish Paintings
engravings were to be taken survive including this notably fine work showing the canal between the lower and upper lakes. A later topographical writer George Newenham Wright explains the origin myths that had accrued to this spot between the lakes: ‘The entrance into the Upper Lake is contracted into a narrow passage, of about thirty feet in breadth usually called Coleman’s Leap, from a tradition that a person of this name once leaped across the chasm. The contraction in this place is occasioned by a peninsula, called Coleman’s Eye, which strikingly represents the form of the human eye, when viewed on a map.’ The exhibition at Fisher’s home of the six oils from which the prints were to be taken seems to have been the first one-man exhibition ever held in the city (indeed predating by some years Nathaniel Hone’s 1775 London exhibition which is usually described as the first such showing in the metropolis). The advertisement continued: ‘such persons as wish to encourage this undertaking, may see the different views of Killarney at Mr. Fisher’s house in Great Ship Street.’ In addition to the present work showing the narrow ‘canal’ between the upper and lower lakes, the engraved views included Dunloe Castle Across the Lake; and O’Sullivan’s Cascade. Also from the series is the oil of the Eagle’s Nest now in the National Gallery of Ireland while the magnificent and wellknown View from Lord Kenmare’s House is in a private collection. The success of these compositions led Fisher to duplicate some of the works. There is a fine replica of the View from Lord Kenmare’s House in the Entrance Hall of Caledon, County Tyrone (Sean O’Reilly, Irish Houses and Gardens from the Archives of Country Life, 1998, p. 102) and a noticeably inferior and quite possibly not autograph version of the present work in the Ulster Museum. The engraving after the present work by Pierre-Charles Canot (c.1710-77), a French engraver who spent most of his career in London (which makes some changes to the detail, amending the staffage of rustics into genteel tourists) is fulsomely dedicated to William Burton of Slane Castle. Fisher’s interest in Killarney continued throughout his career, culminating some two decades later with his Picturesque Tour of Killarney of 1789. Fisher made his reputation in the years leading up to the Killarney series of 1768. In 1763 he won a premium of ten guineas from the Dublin Society for the ‘best landscape’, winning again in 1768, the year he painted the present work. Through the 1760s he was actively involved in the art politics of the period, being one of a group of artists (including Robert Carver) who were tasked with assessing the viability of the Dublin An Exhibition of 17th-21st Century Irish Paintings
Society’s School of Figure Drawing. He was also a founder member of the Society of Artists in Ireland and exhibited at their annual shows in the octagonal exhibition room in (South) William Street. This picture, for example, was included in the 1769 exhibition as No. 26, A View of the Canal between the upper and lower lakes. Indeed, it is appropriate, given the extent of the artist’s engagement with the Killarney landscape, that his very last exhibit at the Society in 1780 was a further Killarney view. Fisher was something of a latecomer to art, as has recently been shown though the correct establishment of his birth date. Previously this had been given as ‘probably in the 1740s’ (Crookshank and Glin, Ireland’s Painters, 2002, p. 54). Instead, however, church records indicate that he was baptised in St Luke’s in The Coombe on 22 November 1735. This shows that Fisher was much closer in age to George Barret, born, also in the Liberties, in 1732 than to William Ashford and Thomas Roberts with whom he is more usually associated.
Confirmation of his birth date demonstrates that Fisher was a rather mature twenty-eight when he was awarded the premium in 1763 referred to above, and indeed makes sense of Pasquin’s assertion that he was originally a ‘woolen draper in the Liberties’ (See William Laffan and Brendan Rooney, ‘A Letter from Phillipe-Jacques de Loutherbourg to Jonathan Fisher’, IA&DS, XVII, 2014). Clearly entrepreneurial, Fisher continued to combine business activities with his art, being active in property dealing and publishing and he formed a notable collection of paintings including works by Thomas Gainsborough, Richard Wilson, George Barret and ‘others by Italian and Dutch artists’ (Strickland). This was dispersed at auction after his death. Omitted from the auction was a lost ‘picture of the artist’s club’ which he bequeathed to his pupil Henry Graham, the title evoking the convivial world of Dublin’s artistic society of the period. June 2017
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8. Horace Hone, A.R.A.
‘The Gentle Eliza’ Watercolour on paper, 9.8 x 8.8, in a black Papier-mâché rectangular frame Signed, titled and dated: ‘The Gentle Eliza Drawn by Horace Hone, ARA, 1800’ Also signed and annotated verso: ‘No. 1, Portrait of a well known female in the City of Dublin. H. Hone, ARA, and Miniature Painter to HRH The Prince of Wales. No. 212 Picadilly’ Engraved: Etched by the artist in 1800 Exhibited: Society of Artists in Ireland, Dublin, 1800 Royal Academy, London, 1802, no. 723 Literature: Walter Strickland, Dictionary of Irish Artists (Dublin and London, 1913) Vol. 1, p. 513; Nicola Figgis (ed.), Art and Architecture of Ireland, (Dublin, London and New Haven, 2014) Vol. 2, p. 307
In this, one of his most successful works which he exhibited in both London and Dublin and of which he produced an etching, Horace Hone continues the tradition of his father Nathaniel in recording contemporary street life, painting ‘Gentle Eliza’ a ‘well known female in the city of Dublin.’ The name seems to be a playful – and no doubt ironic – reference to Laurence Sterne’s beloved Elizabeth Draper, subject of the Journal to Eliza where she is often given the epithet gentle. A review of the 1800 Dublin exhibition in which Gentle Eliza was included noted that Hone’s drawing had ‘all the strength and precision of a great master’ while his portraits bore ‘all the perfection of the strongest similitude’ (Hibernian Journal, 11 July 1800). Certainly this remarkably striking image attests to both of the qualities for which this exhibition drew such praise. On the reverse Hone, giving his address as 212 Picadilly in London, records with pride his appointment a few years earlier as miniature painter to the Prince of Wales, later George IV. Page 12 – Gorry Gallery – June 2017
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9. Sir Thomas Alfred Jones P.R.H.A. c.1823-1893 ‘Woman Knitting’ Oil on board 43.5 x 33 Signed centre left with monogram
Exhibited: Possibly R.H.A. No. 171, in 1869 as ‘Granny’ Jones trained at the Royal Dublin Society’s school in 1833 and soon became an established portrait painter, exhibiting with increasing regularity at Dublin’s Royal Hibernian Academy from 1841, right up until his death in 1893. He was in demand to paint Dublin’s high society, and according to Strickland by the late 1860’s he ‘had almost a monopoly of portrait painting in Ireland’. Among about 250 titles listed at the RHA, a significant number suggest his parallel interest in genre painting. The most prominent of these is his large dynamic narrative of three young women, ‘Connemara Girls’ (1880, his most highly priced work at £120), which was sold in this gallery’s most recent previous exhibition. It reveals his knowledge of Ireland’s working economy and the material culture of rural women. Like James Brenan, who was headmaster of Cork School of Art, and also produced genre paintings at this time from Cork, a regular income from other work enabled him to indulge in his topical depiction of the rural poor. This portrait demonstrates Jones’ keen observation of a woman in her old age, warmly dressed in the traditional An Exhibition of 17th-21st Century Irish Paintings
clothing of the farmhouse, her white bonnet denoting her married status, a blue hooded cloak draped loosely around her shoulders. This may be the simply titled ‘Granny’, one of thirteen paintings exhibited in 1869, the same year that he became the President of the Royal Hibernian Academy. Her white hair, lined face and direct expression indicate a specific sitter, and the background, with seed-heads stark against a discoloured whitewashed farmhouse wall, echo her declining years. She seems to have paused while knitting socks. The several needles and ball of blue wool, are likely to have been home-spun, like her crossed over shawl. Spinning and knitting, along with poultry rearing, dairying, lacemaking and sewing, were cottage industries that enabled women to gain a measure of economic independence. However, by this time, mechanisation of the stocking industry was making it increasingly hard for such traditional crafts to compete. When Jones was knighted in 1880, he was the first President of the R.H.A. to be awarded that honour. Dr. Claudia Kinmonth MA(RCA) Moore Institute Research Fellow N.U.I. Galway June 2017
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William Sadler II c.1782-1839
10. ‘Return of the Wedding Party’ Oil on wood 22 x 33
11. ‘Leaving the Sheebeen, Co. Wicklow’ Oil on wood 22 x 33
12. ‘View of Drogheda’ Oil on wood 17.5 x 25.5
13. ‘View of Dublin from near Clontarf’ Oil on wood 22.7 x 35.1
14. ‘Bullock Harbour’ Oil on wood 20.7 x 27.2 Page 14 – Gorry Gallery – June 2017
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James Arthur O’Connor c.1792-1841
15. ‘Landscape with a Figure on a Path, Lake in Distance’ Oil on board 18.5 x 23.3 Signed with initials
16. ‘River Landscape with Figures on a Path’ Oil on board 17.8 x 22.9 Signed with initials An Exhibition of 17th-21st Century Irish Paintings
June 2017
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17. George Bernard O’Neill 1828-1917 ‘The Father of the Regiment’ Oil on canvas 91.5 x 72 Signed and dated ʼ77
Exhibited: Royal Academy, London 1877 no. 511 Page 16 – Gorry Gallery – June 2017
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George Bernard O’Neill’s grandfather, Arthur O’Neill, was a manufacturer of gold and silver watch-cases in the city of Dublin, at a time when the making of watchcases was considered one of the fine arts. Arthur O’Neill seems to have been prosperous, for he owned a private house in Hoey’s Court and a country cottage facing the green at Harold’s Cross; but by the end of his life the boom in watch-cases – like Dublin trade in general – was on the decline, and when his son Bernard, a clerk in the Board of Ordnance at Dublin Castle, tried to carry on the factory in his spare time, he found the task too much for him. In the winding-up of the business, Bernard O’Neill was saddled with substantial debt which was to prove a constant source of anxiety. His salary was small, and by his marriage in 1815 to Sarah Gower, daughter of a Dublin solicitor, he had 15 children. The ninth of these, born in 1828, was George Bernard O’Neill. In 1837 the staff of the Dublin Ordnance Office was cut down and Bernard O’Neill was among those threatened with a pension. Luckily, he had a friend in London who had sufficient influence with the Master-General of the Ordnance to procure him the appointment of storekeeper in the carriage department at Woolwich. Arriving in England at the age of nine, G.B. O’Neill went first to a school in Rectory Place, Woolwich, and then to another on the Common, where General Gordon was a fellow pupil. Soon he began to study art at the Royal Academy schools, winning the Gold Medal and other medals; when he was 19 his first picture was hung in the Academy, and from 1851 he exhibited annually. Having acquired an excellent general technique, he specialised in genre painting – a popular and profitable form of art in Victorian days. Two of the pictures that made his name were The Foundling, later acquired by the Tate Gallery, and The Obstinate Juryman. ‘The Father of The Regiment,’ is one of G.B. O’Neill’s ‘fancy’ paintings, but with a difference! Painted in 1877, and exhibited at The Royal Academy in that year. It was sold, according to the artist’s account’s book1 for the grand sum of £350 to ‘Lovatt,’ presumably Simon Fraser, 13th Lord Lovat 1828-1887. Whilst this painting includes the normal array of G.B. O’Neill’s children – Constance, the older girl to the right of the painting, and the boys Frank and Harry, rather than Norman who would have been not quite two years old – it also includes, as the central figure, an officer of the Heavy Cavalry wearing the Victoria Cross medal, which is being closely inspected by the boy on his knee. Dr. Alistair Massie, of The National Army Museum in London, and an expert on all things military, particularly The Crimea War, has been kind enough to produce a list of all possible recipients of the Victoria Cross from the two earliest conflicts in which it was awarded – The Crimean War, and The Indian Uprising. Bearing in mind the age of An Exhibition of 17th-21st Century Irish Paintings
the soldier at the date of this painting (1877) Dr. Massie has said that these two campaigns represent the only ones practically possible to concord with the age of the sitter. From the list kindly provided by Dr. Massie we have been able to identify the sitter as Dr. James Mouat VC, winner of the first ‘medical’ VC, and later to become Surgeon General Sir James Mouat CB, VC, Honorary Surgeon to Queen Victoria, and whose house at 108, Palace Gardens Terrace in Kensington was all of 50 yards from that of long term Kensington resident G.B. O’Neill in Kensington Mall. As to whether they “knew” each other one cannot know for certain, but as G.B. O’Neill had as a good friend and god-father to his youngest son, Admiral Wallace Houston, and a daughter whose brother-in-law was a member of the peerage, it seems reasonable to assume the artist, like so many others at that time, moved in fashionable circles. Sir James Mouat was the first of 36 doctors to win the Victoria Cross. Born in Kent in 1815, he was educated at University College London before joining the army. After service in India and Ireland he joined the 6th (Inniskilling) Dragoons as regimental surgeon and served with them throughout the Crimean Campaign, where he was also in charge of the General Field Hospital of the 3rd Division. He was present at the Fall of Sebastopol, the Battles of Tchernaya and Inkerman. At the charge of the Light Brigade, Balaklava, his gallantry resulted in the award of the Victoria Cross, with the following Citation – ‘Date of act of bravery: 26 Oct 1854. For having voluntarily proceeded to the assistance of Lieut. Colonel Morris, CB, 17th Lancers, who was lying dangerously wounded in an exposed position after the retreat of Light Cavalry at the Battle of Balaklava, and having dressed the officer’s wounds in the presence and under a heavy fire from the enemy. Thus, by stopping a severe haemorrhage, he assisted in saving that officer’s life.’ After the Crimean War he was appointed principal medical officer to the British troops in the New Zealand Wars. After serving in New Zealand he returned to England and became Inspector General of Hospitals then Surgeon General. Mouat retired on 28 April 1876. He was appointed an honorary surgeon to the Queen in 1888, and a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1894. He married Adela Rosa Tindall in Dublin on the 6th October 1859. He died of a stroke on 4 January 1899 at the age of 83. The artist’s own testament to his distinguished neighbour can be deduced from the book lying on the ground on the right of the painting. Entitled ‘The Newcomes,’ a novel serialised by the great Victorian author William Makepeace Thackeray, it chronicles the life of Colonel Newcome and his artist son. The expression “to be a Colonel Newcome” became a synonym for probity in the Victorian era. Reference: 1 Now in the V&A National Art Library. “Art Expenses” – G.B. O’Neill – Ref. Number: MSL/1972/4395. June 2017
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18. Edwin Hayes R.H.A., R.I. 1820-1904
‘Portrush, Ireland’ Oil on canvas 50.8 x 86.2 Signed and dated 1868, also signed and inscribed with title verso
19. James Francis Danby R.B.A. 1816-1875 ‘Lakeside Landscape at Dusk’ Oil on canvas 76.2 x 122.5 Signed and dated 1850
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20. Howard Eaton Helmick R.B.A. 1840-1907
‘An Irish Apollo Piping to the Graces’, undated c.1873 Bodycolour en grisaille on paper 57 x 78 Signed The son of a clerk, born in Zanesville Ohio, Howard Helmick trained in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Subsequently moving to Europe, he then studied under Cabanel at Paris’s ‘Ecole des Beaux-Arts’, where the first titles he began to exhibit were French. Moving on to paint in rural Ireland, the series of genre paintings that resulted were concentrated in the south west, where he visited Kinsale, and the west, near Galway. The Irish addresses from which he exhibited, together with those in London, coincided exactly with his fellow American companion and artist, Elizabeth Waters. Josephine Lizzie Cloud was one of her pen names, and the one she used when exhibiting her paintings. She published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, and illustrated her 1873 article ‘A Lone Woman in Ireland’ with a sketch called ‘The Piper’, the same year that one of Helmick’s first works, ‘The Irish Piper’ was shown at the R.H.A. Cloud’s piper is shown here in reverse, as prints often are, but the resemblance remains, although her background differs. Several other images by these close companions can be juxtaposed and recognised as the same models, subjects or situations, and this work slots into the same jigsaw puzzle, which during their lives, was a closely guarded secret. In 1894 Helmick published an etching of this scene, entitled ‘An An Exhibition of 17th-21st Century Irish Paintings
Irish Apollo Piping to the Graces’ in an article entitled ‘An American Wilkie’. These complicated looking Uilleann pipers were also painted by other visitors to Ireland, as were the barefooted colleens. The pose chosen here by Helmick for the older girl, wrist on hip and hand on skirt, is the same (but in reverse) as used in one of Cloud’s illustrations. Helmick lived up to the title, an Irish Wilkie, as he has emerged as one of the most talented and celebrated of the few artists to be inspired by rural Irish life in the 1870’s and ’80’s. He is best known for his larger narrative oil paintings, many of which have been seen in these rooms, such as Bringing Home the Bride and News of the Land League (National Gallery of Ireland collection). It is exciting that yet more of his work is coming to light, and still promises to. Dr. Claudia Kinmonth MA(RCA) Moore Institute Research Fellow, N.U.I. Galway. References: C. Kinmonth, Irish Rural Interiors in Art (Yale University Press, 2006), see title-page. C. Kinmonth, ‘Howard Eaton Helmick Revisited: Matrimony and Material Culture through Irish Art’, in V. Krielkamp, Rural Ireland the Inside Story (McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Exhibition catalogue, 2012), pp. 89-101. June 2017
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Harry Kernoff R.H.A. 1900-1974
21. ‘The Dodder, Milltown’ Oil on wood 38.3x49.2 Signed, also signed and inscribed on original label verso
22. ‘Canal Scene, Dublin’ Oil on wood 37.5 x 50.5 Signed, also signed and inscribed with his address 13 Stamer Street Dublin verso Page 20 – Gorry Gallery – June 2017
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23. Harry Kernoff R.H.A. 1900-1974
‘Portrait of Seán Keating P.R.H.A.’ Pastel on paper 38.5 x 28.2 Signed and dated ʼ60, also signed, inscribed and dated verso An Exhibition of 17th-21st Century Irish Paintings
June 2017
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24. Jack B. Yeats R.H.A. 1871-1957 ‘The Fiddler’ c.1907 Pen and ink on paper 22.3 x 17 Signed
Provenance: Theo Waddington’s Irish Art Project; Private Collection Page 22 – Gorry Gallery – June 2017
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This black ink drawing of The Fiddler was used as the design for a print originally published by the Dun Emer Industries in 1907 and listed in the guild’s catalogue of that year. It was subsequently included in the Cuala Press Prospectus of 1908. A hand-coloured print of The Fiddler was exhibited at the Arts and Crafts Society of Ireland in 1909.1 Jack Yeats’s sisters, Susan and Elizabeth Yeats, were co-founders of Dun Emer with Evelyn Gleeson and Elizabeth (Lolly) Yeats ran the printing part of the business. Yeats designed prints for Dun Emer Press from 1906 and for its successor, the Cuala Press, from 1908 to the mid 1920s. The drawings were used to make line-blocks which were printed and usually hand coloured by Yeats himself or by other workers at the press. Yeats produced 29 different drawings for oneoff prints for Cuala, including The Fiddler.2 These were images of rural Ireland often depicting types including ballad singers and seanchaí or scenes of mountain farms or fair days.
image. Yeats imitated the primitiveness and simplicity of their design in his drawing style of these years.
The Fiddler depicts a musician playing his violin in the interior of a country house. Such musicians made a modest income from playing at dances and fairs and on occasions in private houses. The fiddler was an iconic figure in the work of Yeats, reflecting his significance in rural life during the Celtic Revival. The artist’s brother W.B. Yeats also venerated the power of this character, most famously in his 1899 poem The Fiddler of Dooney, when the musician’s prowess compels all who hear him to dance.
The close connection between sea and music in the drawing relates to Yeats’s own close association of the two themes in his imagination and memory. As a child he was often allowed to accompany the pilot in his rowing boat when he guided ships along the Garavogue River into Sligo town. The pilot was escorted by a fiddler and both reappear in Yeats’s later work.4 In addition Yeats was deeply impressed by the writer J.M. Synge’s talents as a fiddle player, which he discovered on their journey through Mayo and Galway in 1905. Later he wrote of Synge, ‘if he had lived in the days of piracy he would have been the fiddler in a pirate schooner, him they called ‘the music’.5
Fiddle players recur in many of Jack Yeats’s paintings. His sketchbook records a fiddle player in Killybegs in August 1898 and in the same year he painted his watercolour painting, A Music, which shows three men playing fiddles in the street.3 Fiddle players are also a feature of his later oil paintings, most notably Singing the Dark Rosaleen, Croke Park, 1921 and Music in the Train, 1923. In The Fiddler, the music creates a contemplative atmosphere. A sailor sits listening, with his head inclined towards the music and his eyes closed. Two long narrow ballad sheets are pinned to the wall behind the men. One has the date ’98 at the top and the other a bust of a military figure, possibly Robert Emmet or some notable revolutionary of the past. Another ballad sheet is rolled up and visible in the pocket of the fiddler linking the figure to a long tradition of nomadic musicians and performers. Yeats had a large collection of ballads, and even wrote his own versions under the pseudonym Wolfe Tone MacGowan. Ballad sheets, whose lyrics were often of a seditious nature, were sold by itinerant singers and musicians all over Ireland during the 19th century but were becoming less usual by the time this drawing was made. The sheets were sometimes decorated with crudely printed images or elaborate headings as in the ones in this An Exhibition of 17th-21st Century Irish Paintings
Above the ballad sheets a framed print of a maritime scene is hanging. Boats and ships of all kinds can be seen in the waters of the foreground. This, in addition to the picture of a sailor on the staircase and another maritime scene beside it, convey the imaginative escape provided to the listeners by the music and to the lives that they have lived or seek to live beyond the confines of this house. The creative aspect of the music is further developed by the face of the small child in the upper left of the composition who has sneaked down the stairs to listen to the visitor’s playing. The three figures, the child, the fiddler and the sailor are all outsiders in their own ways, sharing an independent and highly developed imaginative life. The richness of this is contrasted by the relative modesty of the house in which they are located with its simple stone flag floor and wooden wainscot.
Diagonal lines of black ink are used to express the patterning of the wood and stone and the heavy cloth of the fiddler’s coat and trousers. The diverse directions of these lines create a dynamic surface that adds to the detail of the image but also suggest the rhythm and melody of the music. Pencil lines, where Yeats planned out the composition, are faintly visible in parts of the work. The concise use of black and white made the image ideal for printing and reproduction but it also conveys the simplicity and honesty of life in rural Ireland, an idea that appealed to admirers of Yeats’s work and patrons of the Cuala press. While deceptively simple in execution the work contains enormous detail. Above all it demonstrates the artist’s astute observation of people and their response to the emotional power of music. Dr. Róisín Kennedy References: 1 Hilary Pyle, The Different Worlds of Jack B. Yeats. His Cartoons and Illustrations, Irish Academic Press, 1994, pp. 284, 288. 2 Pyle, The Different Worlds of Jack B. Yeats, pp. 28-29; pp. 280-90. 3 Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats. His Watercolours, Drawings and Pastels, Irish Academic Press, 1993, p. 72. 4 Hilary Pyle Jack B. Yeats A Biography, Rowman & Littlefield, 1970, p. 17. 5 Jack B. Yeats quoted in Pyle, Jack B. Yeats. A Biography, p. 97. June 2017
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25. Nathaniel Hone R.H.A. 1831-1917 ‘The Moored Boat’ Oil on canvas, laid on panel 16 x 26
Provenance: with Daniel Egan, Dublin: Irish Sale, Christie’s London 8 May 2008, lot 31 Like Walter Osborne, Nathaniel Hone’s most personal feelings towards Nature were sometimes expressed in his small, spontaneous studies in oil or watercolour as much as in his larger, more carefully composed paintings. This is the case with this small intimate painting in oil of a boat moored by a riverbank with trees behind. Some of Hone’s woodland landscapes can be slightly awkward in composition, but The Moored Boat is perfectly composed, so that the picture just falls naturally into place. A low rowing boat is moored on the river bank. The trees, poplars and sky are reflected in the water. The scene may seem uninhabited at first, yet there is the small figure of a woman on the river bank, quite sketchily painted, which adds to the allure of the picture. The location of the picture is not known. Although the free, sketchy brushwork is characteristic of some of Hone’s later Irish paintings, the river subject, boat and verdant tones of the picture suggest that it is French, perhaps dating to his early Barbizon period of the 1860s, or to a later visit to France. There is a tranquil, meditative mood, reminiscent of paintings by Corot, such as The Fisherman (Dublin City Gallery, the Hugh Lane), and evocative of Henry Thoreau’s book about Walden Pond, 1954. Hone’s painting style is often free and fluid, but here is particularly vigorous, the boat, for example, being conveyed with quick, liquid strokes. He uses quite a coarse canvas, allowing the weave to show through the pigment in places. Julian Campbell Page 24 – Gorry Gallery – June 2017
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Henry Robertson Craig R.H.A. 1916-1984
26. ‘By the Seine’ Oil on canvas laid on board 26 x 30.8 Signed also inscribed verso
27. ‘The Grand Canal’ Oil on board 30.4 x 40.5 Signed also signed and inscribed verso Exhibited: Guildhall Galleries Limited, Chicago 10-9-65
28. ‘The Road to Leenane’ Oil on canvas 63.5 x 76.2 Signed, Signed again and inscribed with title verso An Exhibition of 17th-21st Century Irish Paintings
June 2017
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29. Alexander Williams R.H.A. 1846-1930 ‘Skerries Harbour’ Oil on canvas laid on board 25.3 x 35.6 Signed
Literature: Privilege & Poverty. The Life and Times of Irish Painter & Naturalist Alexander Williams R.H.A. 1846-1930 by Gordon T. Ledbetter, The Collins Press, 2010, illustrated page 181 together with a preparatory pencil sketch
30. William Osborne R.H.A. 1823-1901
‘A Portrait of John Gregson, on a hunter with the Braham Moor Hunt in a landscape’ Oil on canvas 58.5 x 81.5 Signed with his address 5 Castlewood Avenue, Dublin and dated 1870 verso In original gilt frame made by Cranfields 115 Grafton Street, Dublin with original label Page 26 – Gorry Gallery – June 2017
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31. Richard Thomas Moynan R.H.A. 1856-1906
‘Haymaking’ Oil on canvas 51 x 76 Signed with monogram and dated 1882, also signed and inscribed 1, Eldon Terrace, Dublin on original label verso Exhibited: Gorry Gallery Nov-Dec 1988, catalogue no. 31 where purchased by the present owner Provenance: Private Collection
Daniel Maclise R.A. 1806-1870
32. Edwin Hayes R.H.A., R.I. 1820-1904 ‘Shipping in a Rough Sea’ Watercolour on paper 7 x 45 Signed
33. Joseph W. Carey 1859-1937 ‘Cushendall’ Watercolour on paper 25 x 46 Signed, inscribed and dated 1923
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34. ‘The Death of Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar’ Hand coloured line engraving by Charles William Sharp published 1874 30 x 114
35. ‘The Meeting of Wellington and Blücher, at La Belle Alliance, after the Battle of Waterloo’ Hand coloured line engraving by Lumb Stocks R.A. published 1872 30 x 114 Both after the original monumental fresco paintings in The Royal Gallery, Houses of Parliament, Westminster. June 2017
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38. Claude Hayes R.I., R.O.I. 1852-1922 ‘Near Dordrecht’ Oil on canvas 42 x 59 Signed
Exhibited: Belfast Art Gallery and Museum, Loan Exhibition 1920 (original label verso) Gorry Gallery Exhibition 1985 where purchased by the present owner
36. William Bingham McGuinness R.H.A. 1849-1928
‘Morning Effect, Cathedral of Bruges’ Pencil and watercolour heightened with white on paper 51 x 32.5 Signed, also signed and inscribed on original label verso Exhibited: Royal Hibernian Academy, 1923 no. 45, £21-0-0
39. Dorothy Blackham 1896-1975
‘Kildownet, Achill Sound’ Oil on board 60.3 x 75 Signed, also signed and inscribed on original label verso Exhibited Royal Hibernian Academy 1938, no. 38, £35-0-0
37. Thomas Ryan p.P.R.H.A. b.1929
‘High Livers in Low Places’ Watercolour on paper 20 x2 5 Signed, also signed and inscribed verso Page 28 – Gorry Gallery – June 2017
Dorothy Blackham was born in Dublin in 1896 and studied at the R.H.A. Schools and later in London at Goldsmiths’ College. She worked in several mediums including oil, watercolour and linocut and was a regular exhibitor at the R.HA. from 1916 to 1946, the W.C.S.I. from 1934 to 1971, as well as the R.H.A. the Ulster Society of Women artists and also in London. An Exhibition of 17th-21st Century Irish Paintings
40. Elizabeth Rivers 1903-1964 ‘Children Climbing a Wall’ Oil on canvas 54.5 x 65 Signed
Exhibited: Waddington Gallery, summer 1953; Irish Exhibition of Living Art, 1953 no. 77; Independent Artists, 1961 no. 10; Memorial Exhibition, 1966 no. 21 Gorry Gallery, Elizabeth Rivers A Retrospective View 1989 catalogue no. 11
41. John Mackie b.1953
‘The Ha’penny Bridge, Dublin’ Oil on canvas 61 x 76 Signed
Landscape, cityscape and portrait painter. Born Glasgow 1953, now resides at Haworth, Yorkshire. Studied at the Glasgow School of Art 1972-1976. Travelled widely painting and exhibiting in Europe, U.S.A. and Canada. Exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy, Royal Glasgow Institute and leading London and provincial galleries. An Exhibition of 17th-21st Century Irish Paintings
June 2017
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42. Hannah Baker b.1986 ‘The Kitchen Table’ Oil on canvas 51.5 x 92 Signed
Originally from South Buckinghamshire. She completed a Fine Art and Art History degree at Lancaster University before travelling to the prestigious Charles H. Cecil Studios in Florence, where she learnt the traditional technique of Sight-Size. She continued her training in Dublin with the artist Gearóid Hayes and at the Sarum Studios in Salisbury under the tuition of Nicholas Beer. Hannah is now reading for a masters in the History of Art at Trinity College Dublin whilst working as a Portrait and Still Life painter.
Lia Laimböck b. 1965 (Nos. 46, 47, 48, 49 and 50 not illustrated)
43. ‘Jack’ Oil and gold leaf on panel 17 x 14
44. ‘Little Catherine’ Oil and gold leaf on panel 17 x 14
45. ‘Puss’ Oil and acrylic on panel 17 x 14
Lia Laimbock studied at the Royal Academy of Visual Arts in The Hague in The Netherlands from 1982 and graduated in 1988. Since 2015 she is a Master teacher at the Classical Academy in Groningen. Her focus has been portraits (YouTube Inauguration portrait of the HRH Willem Alexander and HM Maxima by Lia Laimbock). As well as her Origin series (YouTube Lia Laimbock) about Life and Death. Landscapes, ceramics (YouTube Ceramics by Lia Laimbock) mixed media works and Ink drawings. Influenced by Gustav Klimt, Japanese wood prints; Ukiyoe and The Flemish Primitives like Rogier van der Weyden, Dieric Bouts and Hans Holbein. The small works at this exhibition (June 2017) highlight in their size and themes a world of intimacy. Page 30 – Gorry Gallery – June 2017
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Paul Kelly b.1968
Norman Teeling b.1944
51. ‘Oiling the Engine’ Oil on board 30.5 x 25.5
54. ‘The Red Chair’ Oil on board 60.5 x 50.8
52. ‘Skerries Allotments’ Oil on board 36.8 x 52
55. ‘Balscaddden Bay, Howth’ Oil on board 30.3 x 40
53. ‘Dingle Races’ Oil on board 25.5 x 30.5
56. ‘Store Street, Dublin’ Oil on board 20.2 x 25.3
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June 2017
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Gerard Byrne b.1958
57. ‘Barges at Hammersmith’, London Oil on Canvas 65 x 65 Signed
58. ‘Henjo’ Hammersmith, London Oil on Canvas 55 x 115 Signed Page 32 – Gorry Gallery – June 2017
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Index of Artists and Catalogue Number (in red)
Cat. No. page
Cat. No. page
Ashford, William
(5) 8
Huchtenburg, Jan van (front cover)
(1) 2
Atkinson, George Mounsey Wheatley
(3) 4
Jones, Thomas Alfred
(9) 13
Baker, Hannah
Kelly, Paul
(51, 52, 53) 31
(6) 9
Kernoff, Harry
(21, 22, 23)
Bate, William (inside front cover)
(59) IFC
Laimböck, Lia
(43, 44, 45) 30
Blackham, Dorothy
(39) 28
Mackie, John
Barret Jnr., George
Brocas, Samuel Frederick Byrne, Gerard Carey, Joseph W. Craig, Henry Robertson Danby, James Francis
(42) 30
(2) 3 (57, 58) 32 (33) 27
20, 21
(41) 29
Maclise, Daniel
(34, 35) 27
McGuinness, William Bingham
(36) 28
Moynan, Richard Thomas
(31) 27
(26, 27, 28) 25
O’Connor, James Arthur
(15, 16) 15
(19) 18
O’Neill, George Bernard
(17) 16
Elmore, Alfred
(4) 6
Osborne, William
(30) 26
Fisher, Jonathan
(7) 10
Rivers, Elizabeth
(40) 29
Ryan, Thomas
(37) 28
Hayes, Claude Hayes, Edwin Helmick, Howard Hone, Horace Hone, Nathaniel
(38) 28 (18, 32)
18, 27
Sadler II, William
(10, 11, 12, 13, 14) 14
(20) 19
Teeling, Norman
(54, 55, 56) 31
(8) 12 (25) 24
Williams, Alexander
(29) 26
Yeats, Jack B.
(24) 22
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 Aisling Gorry
James Gorry Jnr.
Dr. Róisín Kennedy
Dr. Claudia Kinmonth M.A.(R.C.A.) Ph.D. William Laffan Terry Moylan
Dr. Alistair Massie Susan Mulhall Peter Murray
Charles Payne Colin Rafferty
GORRY GALLERY 20 Molesworth Street, Dublin 2. Telephone and Fax + 353 (0)1 679 5319 The Gallery is open Monday - Friday 11.30 a.m. - 5.30 p.m. Saturday (during exhibition only) 11.30 a.m. - 2.30 p.m. www.gorrygallery.ie Origination by DOC - the_doc@eircom.net Printing by Colorman Printers