Lot 27: Robert Hunter (fl.1752-1803)

Group portrait of George Rochfort, 2nd Earl of Belvedere, and his second wife Jane, daughter of Rev. James Mackay, the latter holding a baby in her arms, three-quarter-length, seated on a sofa, the former in Volunteer uniform, in an interior with a dog at their feet oil on canvas 52 x 61 in. (132 x 155 cm.) PROVENANCE by inheritance in the family of the sitter through the sitter's widow Jane, daughter of Rev. James Mackay, who married secondly Abraham Boyd, whose son George Augustus-Boyd, of Middleton Park, Co. Westmeath, inherited from his mother a great portion of the Belvedere estates NOTES George Rochfort, 2nd Earl of Belvedere was the elder son of Robert Rochfort (1708-1772), 1st Earl of Belvedere, and his second wife Mary, eldest daughter of Richard, 2nd Viscount Molesworth, who married in 1736. The Rochfort family was the richest and most powerful family in Co. Westmeath in the 18th Century. The sitter's great-grandfather, Robert Rochfort (1652-1726), had amassed enormous riches as a Williamite Attorney General, and had become Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer in 1707. The sitter's grandfather, the Rt. Hon. George Rochfort, of Gaulstown (for whom see lot 25) was a political magnate holding a sinecure in the Exchequer Court. The sitter's father, whose mother Lady Elizabeth was the younger daughter of the Henry, 3rd Earl of Drogheda, was elevated to the Irish Peerage in 1737, as Baron of Bellfield, advanced to the Viscountcy of Bellfield in 1751, and was created Earl of Belvedere in 1756. The family lived at Gaulstown, Co. Westmeath, which was well known for its canal, formal gardens and statuary. The 1st Earl, known as 'the Wicked Earl', also built Belvedere House, a small Palladian villa, designed by Richard Castle (c. 1690-1751), on a hill overlooking Lough Ennell, some six miles from the family house, to take advantage of the picturesque lakeside scenery in the early 1740s. He is, however, perhaps remembered most for the notorious cruelty of his response to his wife's confession of adultery with his younger brother, Arthur, confining her to an almost solitary existence at Gaulstown for the remainder of her life and suing his brother for adultery and subsequently allowing the latter to languish in a debtors prison, unforgiven, until his death. Like his father, George Rochfort, pursued a political career and was Member of Parliament for Philipstown (1759-60) and then for Westmeath (1761-8; 1768-75). He succeeded his father as 2nd Earl of Belvedere in 1774. He was also High Sheriff of Co. Westmeath (1762), Governor of Westmeath (1772-3) and joint Governor of Westmeath (1774-1800) and Trustee of the Linen Board to Connaught from 1779 until his death. He also formed the first Corps of Volunteers in 1777 and was the first reviewing General of a volunteer force consisting of one thousand infantry and six hundred cavalry. In this portrait he is shown with his second wife Jane, daughter of Rev. James Mackay. They are recorded as having had three children, all of whom died in their infancy, and on the 2nd Earl's death, without a male heir, the title became extinct. His wife, however, married, as her second husband, in 1815, Abraham Boyd, Kings Counsel, by whom she had a son, George-Augustus Boyd, of Middleton Park, Co. Westmeath, who inherited from his mother a great part of the Belvedere estates. Robert Hunter was for thirty years the most important painter of the Irish establishment, continuing in the tradition of portraiture established in Dublin by James Latham and Philip Hussey, however, little is known of his life. Anthony Pasquin writing in 1796, in the artist's lifetime, said that he was born in Ulster and 'studied principally under Mr. Pope Senior' (A. Pasquin, Memoirs of the Royal Academicians and an authentic History of the Artist's of Ireland, London, 1796, p. 13). William Carey, a reliable Cork critic, comments that he was 'intimate with Madden and Prior' which makes it likely that he was born at some point around 1715/20. He was certainly already a painter of repute by 1753 when he painted the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Sir Charles Burton. His portraiture borrows heavily from several English artists most notably the work of Thomas Hudson and Sir Joshua Reynolds which might suggest that he visited England, however, there is no record of such a trip. This double portrait is one of the artist's most ambitious compositions and one of only a few double portraits by him. Another double portrait by Hunter showing the 2nd Earl of Belvedere, together with his cousin Mr. Handcock, which was formerly attributed to Hugh Douglas Hamilton, and came from the collection of William Rochford of Cahir Abbey, Co. Tipperary, was sold by Christie's, 17 March 1978, as lot 83 (fig. 1). A three-quarter-length portrait of the 1st Earl of Belvedere (1708-1774) in peer's robes, by Hunter, which may well have been painted to celebrate the Earldom to which he was raised in 1756, was sold at the Christie's Belvedere House Sale, 9 July 1980, as lot 272 (see A. Crookshank, 'Robert Hunter', Irish Arts Review, 1989, pp.185 and 180, nos. 77 and 9 respectively). To be included in Anne Crookshank and The Knight of Glin's Ireland's Painters to be published by Yale University Press later this year.