Lot 307: Robert Hunter (c.1715/20-c.1803) Portrait most

Robert Hunter (c.1715/20-c.1803) Portrait most likely to be William Stewart of Killymoon married to Isabella King, standing 3/4 length with his dog and gun and holding a partridge, in a landscape with dead game. Oil on canvas, 122 x 98cm Ref: Gurr Johns Inventory 1914 p.108 ú25 "Gallery" Provenance: Rockingham House For some reason this portrait acquired a family attribution of The 2nd Earl of Shannon. This is so unlikely that it can be dismissed. The Boyles were political foes of The Kings, and also 1740s is the wrong date for the Earl of Shannon for a man aged about forty. When, for the first time, the King portraits were lined up for inspection it was apparent that the present lot was of a man older than the others. Hunter's commission was obviously to depict the whole family and his charming portrait of Eleanor with her son James Stewart begs the logic that her husband, brother in law and political supporter of the Kings would also be included. Stewart was thirty-eight in 1748 and had been married to Eleanor in 1740. He advanced his family, was MP for Co. Tyrone, laid out Cookstown and died in his house at Abbey Street in Dublin in 1797. We have not found an existing image of Stewart to compare but circumstantially there is a strong case that this is indeed William Stewart.