Lot 674: STEPHEN CATTERSON SMITH (1806-1872) (AFTER THOMAS

STEPHEN CATTERSON SMITH (1806-1872) (AFTER THOMAS BEECHEY) Portrait of Lord Lorton, standing three-quarter length wearing military uniform, with cape. Oil on canvas, 140 x 110cm Robert Edward King (1773-1854) was a younger son of the 2nd Earl of Kingston and inherited the Rockingham estate. His daughter, Jane, married Anthony Lefroy of Carrigglas. A supporter of the Union King received titles and built an architecturally advanced house to the designs of John Nash c.1810. He had already fought a duel with his mother's half-brother Colonel Fitzgerald who had abducted his sister and was subsequently implicated in the Colonel's murder at the Kilworth Inn near Mitchelstown. Opinion is divided over his reputation as a landlord; a ruthless policy of evictions, was coupled with subsidies for tenants to resettle in Canada and he pursued a responsible and relatively generous policy in dealing with the famine. It was, however, all a puff of wind as his son the 2nd Viscount (also 6th Earl of Kingston) and his adulteress wife Ann Gore-Booth ruined the estate by leading a rackety life on the continent producing random children of doubtful parentage. Provenance: Carrigglas Manor, Co. Longford