Lot 68: James Latham (1696-1747)

Portrait of Dudley Alexander Sydney Cosby, Lord Sydney of Leix, (1730-1774), when six years old, half-length, in a blue suit, by a rosebush, a dog at his side
with identifying inscription on a label on the reverse 'The Picture of Dudley Alexander Sydney Cosby (afterward/Lord Sydney), only son of Pole Cosby and Mary/his wife, drawn in the 6th year of his age.'
oil on canvas
29 1/2 x 33 3/4 in. (75.5 x 86 cm.)

A. Crookshank and the Knight of Glin, The Painters of Ireland c. 1660-1920, London, 1978, pp. 42-3.
A. Crookshank and the Knight of Glin, Ireland's Painters, New Haven and London, 2002, p.38.

by descent in the family of the sitter at Stradbally Hall; Sotheby's London, 11 July 1984, lot 38 (sold £8, 250)

The sitter, who was born in 1730, was the son and heir of Pole Cosby of Stradbally Hall, Queen's County now Co. Leix, and Mary, daughter and coheir of Henry Dodwell of Manor Dodwell, Co. Roscommon. He was a Member for Parliament for Carrick on Shannon from 1763-68. Appointed Minister to the Court of Denmark from September 1763-April 1765, he was created Lord Sydney of Leix, Baron of Stradbally on 14 July 1768. He married Isabella, daughter of Thomas, 1st Earl of Howth on 16 November 1773, in Dublin, but died two months later at Stradbally when the peerage became extinct.

James Latham, one of the major portraitists in Ireland in the first half of the eighteenth century, had already painted a series of three-quarter-length portraits for the sitter's father, Pole Cosby in the 1730s. This portrait may also originally have been of three-quarter-length format. The portrait suggests a possible knowledge of Watteau and implies a progression by the artist to a more elegant rococo style.

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