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Daniel Maclise RA RHA (1806-1870)
A Figure of Erin
Oil on canvas, 102 x 76cm (40 x 30”)
Signed and inscribed “Caroline Norton, a Stuty for Justice in the House of Lords”
Provenance:Thought to have been acquired by the 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava ,Caroline Norton was the younger
sister of his mother Helen Blackwood , Baroness Dufferin and Clandeboye.The picture remained at Clandeboye
until the 1960’s when there was a sale there and it was acquired by Mariga Guinness (Princess Marie Gabri
elle of Urach) and thence by descent to the current owner, her son, Patrick Guinness.
Exhibited:
Conquering England: Ireland in Victorian London
,The National Portrait Gallery, London, March/June
2005; and
Daniel Maclise: Romancing theh Past
,The Crawford Gallery, Cork, Oct 2008 - Feb 2009
Literature:
A Scandalous Woman: The Story of Caroline Norton
by Alan Chedzoy Allison and Busby London 1992;
Daniel Maclise: Irish Artist in Victorian London
, Nancy Weston, Four Courts Press 2001;
Conquering England: Ireland in Victorian London
2005, by Fintan Culland and R.F. Foster; and
Daniel Maclise 1806-1870: Romancing the Past,
ed. Peter Murray 2008, p.64, full page illustration p.65
€120,000 - 160,000
This picture is almost certainly the same as that described by Maclise in his manuscript autobiography as
A Figure of
Erin
, representing Ireland as a female figure with a harp. The harp here is certainly Irish and has similarities to that
depicted in the oil painting of
Strongbow and Aoife
(National Gallery Ireland).
Caroline Norton also had an Irish connection, being a granddaughter of the playwright Richard Brindsley Sheridan.
She was one of three sisters, collectively referred to as the ‘Three Graces’ due to their combined beauty and accomplish-
ments. Caroline’s eldest sister, Helen, married Price Blackwood, the 4th Baron Dufferin and Clandeboye.Through her,
Caroline became the aunt of Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava who was to
become the 3rd Govenor General of Canada, 8th Viceroy of India and was the British Ambassador to Russia, Ottoman
Empire, Italy and France during his long and successful diplomatic career. Helen’s Bay in Co. Down and Helen’s Tower
(which inspired poems by both Tennyson and Browning) on the Clandeboye estate were named after Caroline’s sister
and this portrait of her was to remain at Clandeboye for nearly 100 years.
However, Caroline was for many, a controversial and even scandalous figure, and her selection to model as the personi-
fication of
Justice
was a daring choice and an untypically direct political statement by Maclise.
Although well connected and well regarded in literary and social circles, Norton had no independent means. When
she separated from her abusive husband he made her the subject of a scandal involving ‘criminal conversation’ with the
then Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, and although cleared by the court, she found her reputation badly damaged
and Melbourne’s government collapsed. Norton prevented Caroline from seeing her three sons, and blocked her from
receiving a divorce. According to English law in 1836, children were the legal property of their father, and there was
little Caroline could do to regain custody.
Cont/-
