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109 Attributed to Sir Martin Archer Shee PRA (1769-1850)
Portrait of the Poet Thomas Moore
Watercolour and gum arabic, 18.25 x 13cm (7¼ x 5”)
€1,000 - 1,500
This is thought to be a study for the Portrait of the Irish writer Thomas Moore (C. 1817) by Sir Martin Shee in the National Gallery
of Ireland (NGI 775).
Born in Dublin, Martin Archer Shee was raised by his aunt, having been orphaned at a young age. He had a precocious talent for art
and by the age of seventeen he was already making a comfortable and independent living as a portraitist. He later moved to London,
where he was introduced to Edmund Burke and Joshua Reynolds, and he became a celebrated painter and a well known figure in
London’s high society. In 1830 he was elected to the prestigious position of President of the Royal Academy and shortly afterwards
received a knighthood. He also wrote poetry and was a notable art critic.
Shee was a life long academician and his work is highly finished and confidently executed. Although often compared to his contem-
porary Thomas Lawrence, Shee’s work is more traditional in style. His portraits and figurative works are characterised by a strong
focus on the sitter’s face and hands. He was particularly notable for his sensitive portrayal of children as in his composition A Peasant
Girl (NGI 26) c.1810-20.
Shee often portrayed his sitters in a decidedly Romantic pose, looking away from the viewer as though deep in thought. This choice
of pose was popular among artists of the nineteenth century when representing writers and politicians.As in the work in the National
Gallery it was used to good effect in his portrait of the Irish writer Thomas Moore here . Moore holds his monocle and gazes beyond
the picture frame as though he has been interrupted from studying the papers that lie on his desk before him. Behind his left elbow,
the spines of more books are visible and confirm the sitter’s intellectual interests and concern for matters of the mind.
