Adam's Country House Collections 18th & 19th October 2021

212 Country House Col lections 583 ATTRIBUTED TO LOUIS-SIMON BOIZOT (FRENCH, 1743-1809) Portrait bust of Marie-Antoinette Carrara marble, 42cm high. Boizot was an artistic director at the Sevres Porcelain Factory who produced models for Sevres biscuit figures. A comparative bust by the Sevres porcelain factory (c. 1785) forms part of the permanent collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Provenance: Private collection, acquired by the present own- ers from Powerscourt house, Wicklow € 2,000 - 3,000 584 JAMES B. COY (C.1750-C.1780) A View based on the Dargle River Landscape, County Wicklow Oil on canvas, 54.5 x 78cm Provenance: Private collection, acquired by the present owners circa 2000. € 15,000 - 20,000 The short-lived James Coy was taught by George Mullins, closely associated with Thomas Roberts and apprenticed to Robert Carver who offered to take him to London when he moved to the metropolis in 1769. Instead, however, he stayed in Dublin and that year began to exhibit with the Society of Artists in their new exhibition room on William Street. Coy’s initial exhibits were of ‘ideal’ landscapes with generic titles which echo those favoured by his master, Carver, for example ‘a landscape ruins and figures’. His Landstorm, another 1769 exhibit, was, no doubt, inspired by works of similar subject matter by Roberts. The following year, however, his exhibition of a painting of Marino anticipated by two years, Roberts’s well-known portrayal of Lord Charlemont’s famed demesne (Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester). Coy’s exhibits in 1772 clearly reflect a sketching trip to Wicklow and included view of Tinnehinch (a subject also painted by Roberts and Jonathan Fisher) but also views more associated with their older, and London-based, contemporary George Bar- ret including a view of Powerscourt Waterfall. This work was singled out for praise in the press, an anonymous critic writing how it conveyed ‘the strongest idea of the subject’ and even suggesting that it was ‘in every respect the best of this view, so often attempted’. Also included by Coy in the 1772 exhibition were two views of the Dargle River, which rises in the Wicklow Mountains and having formed, at Powerscourt, the highest waterfall in Ireland flows through the Glencree Valley before meeting the sea at Bray. The river’s enclosed, rocky landscape, with dramatically shifting light effects, accorded perfectly with the nascent romantic sensibility that was developing among artists in Britain and Ireland and made it a site of picturesque pilgrimage. It is tempting to date the present work to this juncture in Coy’s short career. Clearly inspired by the Dargle scenery (described by one contemporary visitor as ‘most exceedingly Romantick and beautiful’) it may have been based on sketches made on the same trip, though, following the example of Carver and Roberts, he introduces vaguely classical buildings. Coy was clearly a young artist with a rising reputation but sadly he died, aged only thirty, the ‘result of a chill’ caught while sketch- ing outdoors at Westport, County Mayo, hence the great rarity of his work today. Day II LIVE AUCTION at 26 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2: Tuesday 19 th October 2021 starting at 11am