Lot 105: Robert Carver (c.1730-1791)

A wooded river landscape, with figures in the foreground and a hilltop castle beyond
signed with initials 'RC.' (lower left)
oil on canvas
16 1/4 x 25 in.(41.2 x 63.5 cm.)

Robert Carver, the son of the landscape painter Richard Carver (d.1754) (for whom see the previous lot) enrolled in the Dublin Society Schools where he was trained under Robert West. In 1754, when still a young man, he succeeded John Lewis as scene painter at the theatre at Smock Alley. He later moved on to work in the same capacity at Crow Street, also in Dublin. Although primarily a scenery painter he also produced a number of easel paintings and exhibited landscapes at the Society of Artists in Ireland between 1765 and 1768. His work, however, seems to have been underappreciated by his contemporaries and he moved to London at the invitation of David Garrick in 1769 to work at the Drury Lane Theatre, living in Covent Garden. He later transferred his skills to the Covent Garden Theatre, for Spranger Barry, in 1775, where he worked until his death. In London he continued to combine scene painting for the theatre with easel painting and exhibited over twenty-nine paintings at the Society of Artists (of which he became President in 1778) between 1770 and 1780, as well a number of works at the Royal Academy.

This composition, can be compared stylistically to his larger landscape of 1754 in the National Gallery of Ireland (see N. Figgis & B. Rooney, Irish Paintings in The National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 2001, I, no. 4065, illustrated, p.101).

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