Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 1st June 2022

I n our June 2022 sale of Important Irish Art, Adams is delighted to offer two rediscovered masterworks by William Ashford, a pair of paintings showing Dublin Bay looking north and south. These are extraordinarily important paintings from both historical and artistic points of view and, without doubt, the most important eight- eenth-century Irish landscapes to come to market for many decades. Given their significance, we have taken the unusual step of dedicating a stand-alone catalogue to the Dublin Bay views. Adams is grateful to Michael Branagan and William Laffan for contributing essays to this volume. Ashford, who decades after he painted these pictures, would become the first president of the Royal Hibernian Academy, is one of the key figures in Irish art history while perhaps the only works of comparable topographi- cal significance in the corpus of Irish art are Ashford’s own View from Phoenix Park in the National Gallery of Ireland, Joseph Tudor’s view of the city from the same angle (private collection) and John Butts’s View of Cork (Crawford Art Gallery, Cork). The pictures were first sold almost two hundred and fifty years ago at Christie’s, in its original home in London’s Pall Mall, with its legendary founder James Christie at the rostrum. They have been lost sight of in the intervening centuries with their authorship by William Ashford and their subject, Dublin Bay, forgotten. Adams is proud to re-present these works of immense national importance to the public and the scholarly community alike. Over the years Adams has handled important works by all of the leading artists of the eighteenth-century Irish school including Thomas Roberts, Nathaniel Hone and James Barry. Indeed, included in the same sale as the Ash- fords is a highly significant work by his older contemporary George Barret, a sublime landscape inspired by the scenery of the Wicklow Mountains. In addition to offering important Georgian paintings in our regular Irish art sales, our annual auction at Townley Hall always offers a wide selection of Irish eighteenth-century furniture and the decorative arts in an exploration of the material culture of the Irish country house, an aesthetic much associated with the Irish Georgian Society. The bicentenary of Ashford’s death will occcur in two year’s time in 2024. It is greatly to be hoped that this significant anniversary will be marked in some way, perhaps by an exhibition of his work at one of our cultural institutions? In the meantime our June auction offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to acquire one of the great masterpieces of Irish art and icons of Dublin’s history. Stuart Cole MSCSI MRICS Director