Lot 23: William Ashford (c.1746-1824)

A wooded landscape, with figures and livestock on a path and ruins beyond
signed and dated 'W.Ashford/1809' (lower centre)
oil on canvas
21 x 29 1/2 in. (53.5 x 74.9 cm.)

A. Crookshank, 'A Life devoted to Landscape Painting: William Ashford', Irish Arts Review Yearbook, vol. 11, 1995, p. 130, no. 77.

Anon. sale, Christie's, London, 20 November 1981, lot 75 (sold £4,000).
James Adams & Sons, 20 November 1986, lot 118.

William Ashford was born in Birmingham but settled by 1764 in Ireland where he established himself as one of the leading landscape painters for the next forty years. His earliest works were flower paintings but he later specialised in landscape painting, perhaps stimulated and certainly greatly facilitated by his position as Clerk to the Comptroller of the Laboratory section of the Ordnance which involved vast amounts of travelling through rural Ireland inspecting the armaments stored at various barracks and forts. He began exhibiting at the Society of Artists in Dublin in 1767 and first exhibited a landscape there in 1772, winning the first prize for a landscape the following year. His landscape painting was much admired and his election as the first President of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1823 reflected the esteem in which he was held.

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