Lot 108: Thomas Roberts (1748-1778)

An extensive lakeside landscape, with a ruined castle on a hill, and figures loading a cart in the foreground; and A wooded river landscape with the ruined abbey of Castle Dermot, a church and an Irish Round Tower in the distance, and travellers resting beside a track in the foreground
oil on canvas
19 x 26 1/2 in. (48.3 x 67.3 cm.)
pair (2)

The Harcourt Papers, ed. Edward William Harcourt, of Stanton Harcourt and Nuneham Courtenay, Oxfordshire, privately printed, Oxford, III, p.276, nos 150 and 153, recorded at Nuneham in lower sitting Room, North Wing, both as 'Landscape, by Roberts of Dublin'.
Anne Crookshank and the Knight of Glin, The Painters of Ireland c. 1660-1920, London, 1978, p. 133, illustrated in colour pp. 141 and 142, pls. 28 and 29.
Nicola Figgis and Brendan Rooney, The Irish paintings in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 2001, p. 246, under no. 1002, and n. 28. Anne Crookshank and the Knight of Glin, Ireland's Painters 1600-1940, New Haven and London, 2002, pp.146-7.

Commissioned by Simon, 1st Earl Harcourt (1714-1777), Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1772-77) and by descent.

Thomas Roberts, who was born in Waterford, was the most brilliant and shortest lived Irish landscape painter of the second half of the eighteenth century. He had entered the Dublin Society Schools as a boy in 1763 and was taught by the landscape painter James Mannin and afterwards worked under George Mullins as an apprentice when the latter was working in his home town of Waterford, later following him to Dublin where they lived in the same house for a time. By 1766 Roberts was exhibiting at the Society of Artists in Ireland, where he was to exhibit some fifty-nine works before his untimely death from consumption, and he soon established a reputation as an outstanding talent whose services were in great demand especially for his topographical paintings. Among his patrons were the 2nd Duke of Leinster, Viscount Cremorne, and the Veseys of Lucan, who employed him to record their houses and estates and the improvements that so many of them had made to them. Examples of such series of views of houses and their demesnes are the series of large scale pictures of Carton Park, Co. Kildare, painted for the 2nd Duke of Leinster, those of Dawson's Grove, for Viscount Cremorne, and those of Lucan house, of which a set of four are the National Gallery of Ireland and another in this sale (see lot 22).

This pair of landscapes were commissioned by Simon Harcourt, 1st Earl Harcourt (1714-1777), when he was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1772-77) and have remained in the possession of his family until now. One of the pair shows a scene by a lake with a romantic castle dominating a luxuriant valley perched on a hill beyond, the other gives a distant view of Castle Dermot, with the remains of the ruined abbey and round tower clearly visible. Lord Harcourt, who was the son of Simon Harcourt (1684-1720) had succeeded his grandfather as the 2nd Viscount Harcourt in 1727 when only thirteen. Described as 'A most amiable serious fine gentleman of good nature & good sense' he went, like so many of his fellow aristocrats, on the Grand Tour on the continent as a young man in order to further his education (1730-1734), spending two years in Italy, before marrying and applying himself to a military and diplomatic career. He was appointed a Lord of the Bedchamber to King George II and in that capacity was present with the King at the Battle of Dettingen. He was created Viscount Harcourt of Stanton Harcourt in 1749, made governor to the young Prince of Wales, afterwards King George III, and soon after a member of the Privy Council. Harcourt resigned from his post of tutor due to disagreements with his colleagues and spent the next ten years rising through the ranks of the army. In 1761 he acted as proxy for the Prince of Wales's marriage to Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg Strelitz, then conveying her to England. He was later Ambassador to Paris (1768-1772), before being appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, replacing Lord Townshend who had made himself deeply unpopular. As Lord Lieutenant Harcourt was openly welcomed by all parties and proved himself a highly successful administrator although he eventually resigned, retiring to Nuneham Courtenay, his seat in England. This pair of pictures is first recorded in the Lower sitting room of the North Wing of Stanton Harcourt in an inventory of 1806. Lord Harcourt died falling down a well from which he was attempting to rescue a favourite dog.

Lord Harcourt was one of the most powerful men in Ireland and his patronage underlines the reputation that Roberts had forged for himself by this stage in his career. The exceptional quality of the pictures Roberts produced for him may well reflect the importance of his patronage from the artist's perspective. Indeed Anne Crookshank and the Knight of Glin (op.cit., 1978) have suggested that Harcourt may well have been responsible for introducing Roberts to wider English patronage and comment that 'certainly in 1775 Roberts was paid by Sir Watkin Williams Wynn [one of the most important patrons of his day] for two pictures, for the staircase of his new Adam House in St. James's Square'. Interestingly one of these two upright compositions, like one of the Harcourt pair shows the ruined Abbey of Castle Dermot.

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium