Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 27 SEPTEMBER 2023

80 72 WILLIAM JOHN HENNESSY ROI (1839-1917) A Woman in White with Peacocks by a Fountain: (Baroness Methuen (née Eleanor Norah Hennessy at Corsham Court, Wiltshire) Oil on canvas, 76 x 91 cm. (29 x 35¾”) Old stock label, verso Provenance: By descent from the artist; Paul Ayshford Methuen, 4th Baron Methuen (1886- 1974); his sale, Sotheby’s, 8 November 1984, lot 39 € 3,000 - 5,000 With its hints of symbolist, or Aesthetic Move- ment, refinement, this elegant composition documents the, perhaps surprising, connection between the family of an Irish artist and one of England’s great houses. A young woman, dressed demurely in white, but holding a bright red fan, which forms the focal point of the composition sits by a fountain in a landscape dappled by strong summer light. The woman at the centre of this initially enigmat- ic scene is Eleanor Norah (1872-1958) daughter of Kilkenny artist William John Hennessy who married Paul Ayshford Methuen, 4th Baron Methuen, a talented painter and later member of the Royal Academy. Norah, as she was usually known, is shown in the gardens of her new home of Corsham Court in Wiltshire, a treasure house of art. Lady Methuen is accompanied by two of the peacocks for which Corsham is famous – they roam the court and the town’s streets freely. tion; of Whistler in the woman-in-white-with-fan motif – and also in the iconography of the peacock – and of Japanese prints in the multiple viewing points: the woman is shown at close to eye-level while the path progressing out of the picture is depicted as if from a noticeably elevated angle. Hennessy had had to flee Ireland after his fa- ther’s involvement in the Young Ireland rising in 1848 and there is something pleasing in his end- ing his life painting his eligible young daughter in the idyllic grounds of Corsham Court, laid out by ‘Capability’ Brown, while there is a neat circularity in the fact that the house would later become home – through the generosity of his daughter’s husband – to the Bath Academy of Art, associated with artists such as William Scott and William Crozier.