Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 1st June 2022

www.adams.ie William Ashford 1746-1824 23 While artists still very largely continued the tra- dition of painting Dubl in from the west, in the second half of the eighteenth century the beauties of Dubl in Bay came increasingly to be extolled in written accounts. At mid-century John Roque’s praise is still phrased in terms of mercantile util- ity: ‘the situation of Dublin is very agreeable and commodious; being a sea-port, it hath a magnificent harbor, through which a surprising number of vessels are continually passing up the river’. 15 However, ad- miration for the bay’s purely picturesque qual i- ties developed in the 1760s and, particularly, and probably not coincidentally, in the 1770s when Ashford took it for his subject. No doubt safer navigation allowed for greater aesthetic appreci- ation, with the building of the Great South Wall (the South Bull Wall) lessening the terrors of shipwreck caused by the sandbanks on either side of the Li ffey’s mouth. In November 1761 George Montagu wrote to Horace Walpole on the view from Mount Merri- on, home of the Fitzwill iams. Montagu seems to have been one of the earl iest to make what would become a very hackneyed comparison, while also offering as a potential analogy the pol itically- and poetically-charged river landscape close to his correspondent’s home: ‘Nothing near Naples can be more beautiful, with such a view of the sea…as would make your Thames blush for Richmond Hill and Isle- worth… such ships, such mountains, such as [the] hill of Hothe [sic] as makes one not wish for any other em- bellishments’. 16 Richard Twiss, reviled in Ireland for the generally unfavourable account he gave of the country in his Tour of 1775, was captivated by Dubl in Bay and made the same comparison: ‘The entrance into the harbour of Dublin is one of the most beautiful in Europe; though inferior to the bay of Naples merely from the terrific grandeur of Mount Vesuvius, which there forms a most striking object’. 17 I f the Sugar Loaf, whose prof ile compares well with that of Vesuvius, could not compete with the drama of an active volcano, other aspects of the terrain were also given Neapol itan resonance. In a 1772 poem on the Phoenix Park, Howth is classi- cised, somewhat less plausibly, as a new Capri. 18 Six years later Thomas Campbell gave a rapturous account, and most unusually managed not to men- tion Naples. The sun shone bright as we entered the bay of Dublin; which was beyond comparison the finest view I had ever seen. It is a spacious amphitheatre, bounded mostly by a high shore. The country all around is spangled with white villas, which being then burnished by the sun, had a glorious ef fect….the landskip [sic] was upon the whole highly picturesque; being horizoned in some places by mountains, exactly conical, called the Sugar-Loaf hills. 19 Campbell’s omission was an aberration however, and the anonymous visitor who left an account of a visit in the summer of 1797 repeats the compar- ison: ‘ its splendid appearance has never been questioned by any traveller, not has even a parallel been drawn be- tween it and any other view, except that of the Bay of Naples; and connoisseurs are still undetermined to which of the two the preference ought to be given’. 20 Indeed, by the time of Lady Morgan’s Wild Irish Girl (1806) the comparison with Naples had clearly become a cliché: a foreigner on board the packet, compared the view to that which the bay of Naples af fords: I cannot judge of the justness of the comparison, though I am told one very general and common-place; but if the scenic beauties of the Irish bay are exceeded by those of the Neapolitan, my fancy falls short in a just conception of its charms. 21 Thackeray, however, was unimpressed by the hype. His arrival on a rainy night meant he was unable to decide on Dublin Bay’s merits vis-à-vis Naples and he thought it best ‘to take the similarity for granted and remain in bed till morning’. 22 Similarly, Anne Plumptre on her visit in the summer of 1814 declined to join the Dublin-Naples debate as she had not visited the latter, but noted her preference for the bay at Toulon which she had – also praising, closer to home, the beauties of Belfast Lough. By this date, as opposed to when Ashford had painted forty years earlier, depictions of the bay prolifer- ated and frequently repeated views could become hackneyed. Aware of this, Plumptre chose for the, decidedly unpicturesque, illustration which ac- DUBLIN BAY ‘One of the most delightful and picturesque scenes in the world’