Adam's THE LIBRARY COLLECTION 1st May 2024

93 www.adams.ie The Library Collection | 1 st May 2024 ented coterie of artists who came to prominence in the 1760s and ‘70s and who, with Carver, can be seen as a closely interlocked ‘Dublin Group’ of landscape painters. No doubt his ‘generous and companionable qualities’ made him a mentor to younger painters. Carver’s easel paintings are rare and mostly date from his period in Ire- land – the present work seems to be unique in including Irish architectural, or antiquarian remains. However, as more of them are identified his ability becomes apparent and the reasons become obvious for the contemporary praise which was showered on his productions. Here, the red dress of the reclining woman in the foreground provides an effective chromatic highlight at the centre of the composition, while the busy few inches of the paint surface including the figures and animals contrasts with the unbroken sheen of the river with long reflections cast by the late afternoon sun adding a slightly elegiac touch to the romantic, umbrageous Boyne landscape. Pictur- esque travellers in the foreground add a bucolic touch. The picture is painted in Carver’s early and tighter style, before his touch became free, and occasionally loose, from his experience of scene painting. An almost exact parallel can be found in the precise, almost schematic, rendering of light effects on the different facades on the brick building and on a mill in a River Landscape with Figures (Gorry Gallery, Exhibition, 19 May 2010). We are grateful to William Laffan for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.