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had been inspired by the landscape, telling him in lyrical terms: ‘
he could employ himself many years in painting the variety of its
beauties, since every ten yards affords a new and pleasing landscape, and the horizon is every way bounded by such a fine wavy line of
mountains, which come forward, retire backwards, or lose themselves in the clouds, in a thousand agreeable figures’
(cited in Painting
Ireland, p. 158). He did indeed produce more than one work here: the first recorded work is that entitled A View of Dawson’s Grove
which he exhibited with the Society of Artists in 1773 (G. Breeze, Society of Artists in Ireland, Index of Exhibits, 1765-80, Dublin,
1985, I); the second is the subject of this entry and is probably the View of Dawson’s Grove, which he exhibited with the Academy of
Artists, Dublin in 1774.
A third exists (1785, private collection) with a view looking towards the house from Black Island, on Lough Dromore. In the early
1770s, Lord Dartrey had built a Neoclassical mausoleum designed by James Wyatt (1747-1813) in memory of his first wife, Anne neé
Fermor (1733-69), with a sculptural monument to her by Joseph Wilton (1722-1803). In the foreground of this more Neoclassical
composition, Ashford includes himself painting en plein air, beside a classical urn, with the mausoleum at his back.
The subject of the present work with its panoramic view including the house and the estate was produced from the vantage point of
a drumlin overlooking the lake, mid way between St John’s Church on the left and the recently built house on right. Much of the
foreground is given over to the fields, which are shown skirted with a variety of trees. As is typical of Ashford, the treatment of foliage
is assured, and his penchant for early autumnal tints, can be seen here, where the colour of the leaves appears to be turning. In the
distance, Ashford’s ‘
fine wavy line of mountains
’ are shown in pale blue tones.
Influenced by seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painting, pastoral figures and live stock add genre interest to the scene. In centre
foreground two milkmaids are shown, one appears to be carrying a lamb under her arm, while in front of her, another is at work in
the process of milking. To the right a farm labourer, passing a group of farm animals, walks up the hill towards them.
A manuscript label on the reverse of the painting, provides the date of 1774, making it one of Ashford’s earliest surviving works. In
1776 the landscape was engraved by the British topographical printmaker, Benjamin Thomas Pouncy (c. 1750-99). Pouncy’s engrav-
ing, which he published in St Martin’s Lane, London, was dedicated to Lord Dartrey, and a copy is included with this lot, as is a copy
of Paul Sandby’s View of Dawson’s Grove from the site of the unfinished mausoleum, published in ‘
The Virtuosi’s Museum’
Further Reading:
Anne Crookshank, ‘A Life Devoted to Landscape Painting: William Ashford’, Irish Arts Review Yearbook, vol. 11, 1995, pp. 119-30;
Deirdre Conroy, ‘Dawson’s Grove, Co. Monaghan’, Painting Ireland (ed. William Laffan), Tralee, 2006, pp. 156-59; William Laffan
and Brendan Rooney, Thomas Roberts, Tralee, 2009, pp. 91-109, 140-1; Finola O’Kane, William Ashford’s Mount Merrion: The Absent
View (Tralee 2012).
Dr. Nicola Figgis, June 2013
