Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 1st June 2022

32 For once, by contrast, in the present pair of paintings, Dublin Bay is the main subject of the composition and Ash- ford reveals himself a marine and topographical painter of immense style and panache, combining mastery of detail, in the ships’ rigging, for example, or the architectural detailing of specific houses, with pleasing overall effect. One view looks towards the Wicklow Mountains across the South Bull Wall. The settlement at Ringsend, dom- inated by the tower of St Matthew’s Church, has grown noticeably in the three decades or so since William Jones’s portrayal from a more southerly angle (Fig. 2). All is still, with hardly a gust of breeze disturbing the glass-like sur- face of the water. Ashford enjoys painting the ref lections cast by the wide variety of vessels close to shore – and indeed by some of the houses too. There is a futher mir- roring dynamic at play as the sky and sea respond to each other with competing silver tonalities. Sea and sky are di- vided by the line of the South Wall which, merging with the horizon and becoming ever more attenuated, extends across the entire width of the painting. The thin band of land, comprising Ringsend in the middle distance and the mountains set further back, takes up a tiny proportion of the painting’s surface, which, instead quite daringly de- votes almost the entire canvas to the sea or sky. Neverthe- less, the picture nicely echoes the sense often expressed in visitors’ accounts such as Campbell’s of Dublin Bay as an amphitheatre ringed by mountains. At the same time there is a feeling that the viewpoint is taken from the wa- ter rather than the shore, as if, like an Impressionist a cen- tury later, he was painting from a boat. Although clearly based on first-hand observation, the possible inf luence of Dutch seventeenth-century artists such as Jan van de Cappelle (1626-79) and Aelbert Cuyp (1620-91) can also perhaps be detected. In contrast to this image of tranquil harmony, its pendant, looking north across Clontarf Island to Howth Head, of- fers an agitated sea, scudding clouds and shipping with sails full of wind as a squall causes a gaff-rigged fishing boat to heel over. The sense of distance – the aerial per- spective – across the great expanse of the bay is captured with masterly economy. The eye is first caught by the f lick of red in the costume of the workman on the sea wall at bottom left, before it returns to move more slowly across the bay to the sunlit eminence of Howth Head. These aspects of the painting recall a later review of Ashford’s work: ‘His colouring, grouping and perspective deserve high commendation’ while, and specifically relevant here, the critic acutely noted that Ashford’s ‘representation of water, particularly of its foam, is exquisite’. 41