ADAM'S THE LIBRARY COLLECTION 29th April 2025

27 www.adams.ie The Library Collection | 29 th April 2025 John Byron (1723-1786), British vice-admiral, the second son of the 4th Lord Byron, and grand- father of the poet, was born on the 8th of November 1723. He joined the navy as a midship- man but would go on to be considered one of the finest sailors in all of England; despite his dogged bad luck for which he received the nickname of ‘Foul Weather Jack. During one of his expeditions he was wrecked on the southern coast of Chile but survived and proceeded to write up his adventures as ‘The Narrative of Hon. John Byron, Containing an Account of the Great Distresses’ (1768), which his grandson, George Gordon Byron, used in his satirical poem ‘Don Juan’ (1819-1824). Habitually in action against the French, he was chosen to com- mand a secret British expedition in the Dolphin frigate - one of the first British ships to have a copper sheeted hull - to the Falkland Islands to break into the Spanish trade. Afterwards, he completed the circumnavigation of the globe, claiming various Pacific islands for the Crown. Theprovenance of thepresent example is by reputewith TorridonHouse in the ScottishHighlands, the estate, which once belonged to the Duke of Leeds and is now home to the Earl andCountess of Lovelace, sandwiched between rugged, soaring mountains and the deep blue of a sea loch. The family auctioned the contents of the house in 2015 offering a wonderful collection of furniture, paintings and other works of art to the public. The connection with the Byron family resulted from the marriage between Lord King William who married Augusta Ada Byron, the only legitimate daughter of George Gordon, 6th Baron Byron. The Lovelace title was chosen to mark the fact that Ada was, through the families of Byron, Milbanke, Noel and Lovelace, a descendant of the Barons LovelaceofHurley.Thisunionbrought thepromise, inmarriagesettlement,ofvastestatesintheMid- lands and also political advantage, for Adas cousin was Lord Melbourne, the Whig Prime Minister. In this quarter-length portrait Byron is presented in an appropriate manner of attire wearing his captain’s undress uniform and a grey wig. He is set against a dark clouded filled background, with a small patch of light blue sky out of which sails a ship from the British Fleet. Byron strikes a formi- dable presence in this portrait reflecting his many successive years of dedicated and hard service. The numerous long and arduous expeditions is succinctly captured in the line inscribed on the frame, from Byron’s poem, Epistle to Augusta , ‘Our grandsires fate of yore /He had no rest at sea’. JoshuaReynolds (1723-1792)wasapprenticed in1740totheportraitpainterThomasHudson, (1701- 90) and after early work in his native Devon travelled to Italy in 1749. He returned in 1753 to London and rapidly began to establish himself as a portrait painter, profoundly influenced by his time in It - aly. He was the most influential figure of the century in elevating British portraiture painting. Reyn - olds borrowed poses from the old masters, as evidenced by Lord Byron’s strong stance with arms crossed and his left hand holding onto the sword hilt, a posewhich dignified the status of the sitter.