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WilliamHenry Brooke ARHA (1772-1860)
Ascent of the Galtee Mountains
Oil on canvas, 35.3 x 53.4 cm (14 x 21”)
Signed and inscribed on artists label verso No1.
Ascent of the Gaultee
(Sic)
Mountains/
W.H. Brooke, 17
Newman Street
Exhibited: London, Royal Academy, 1823, no. 333
Literature: The Knight of Glin and Anne Crookshank,
The Watercolours of Ireland,
London,
1994, pp.95-96 (where illustrated as a lithograph, fig 1)
The son of the Irish history painter, Henry Brooke (1738-1806), William Henry Brooke spent much of his
career in London. He is best known as an illustrator of books and periodicals alongside a successful practice
as a portrait and genre painter. He was a regular exhibitor at both the Royal Academy from 1810 until 1826
and the Royal Hibernian Academy from 1827 to 1846.
Based on a sketch by the antiquarian and writer,Thomas Crofton Croker, the amusing scene depicted is de-
scribed in great detail in his book, Researches in the South of Ireland, London, 1824, pp.32-33.Three smartly
dressed tourists, Croker himself on the left, his wife Marianne and Marianne’s father, the landscape painter
Francis Nicholson, all uncomfortably ensconced in a simple farmer’s cart with but a few sheaves of hay to
cushion the bumps of an unmade mountain track. Marianne holds on to the cart and her sketch book with
a grim forbearance while the two men appear rather more nonchalant. All of this to the great amusement of
the local bareback cart driver who no doubt had the double pleasure of schadenfreude and payment to boot.
€2,000 - 4,000
Fig 1
