Adam's Country House Collections Day II - 10th October 2023

79 Country House Collections| 9 th - 10 th October 2023 394 WILLEM VAN DER HAGEN (FL. 1720-1745) A pair of Capriccio Italianate Landscapes with Figures and Animals A pair, oil on panel, 17.5 x 25cm € 2,000 - 3,000 These small landscapes form an exciting addtion to the small oeuvre of William Van de Hagen, of- ten seen as the founder of the great school of landscape painting which flourished in Ireland in the eighteenth century. Although they differ com - pletley in scale, these landscapes are directly com- parable to the series of capriccio landsapes which comprise his most original and appealing work, sharing with them the similarly etiolated figures set in a landscape which mixes bucolic tranquility with architetural fantasy. Highlighting the overlap with the larger works is the fact that the detail of the dog barking at the swan is repeated almost ver- batim from the finest of the capriccios, formerly at Kilsharvan House, County Meath (private collection; see the title page to Desmond FitzGerald, Knight of Glin and James Peill, Irish Furniture). Van der Hagen may have travelled extensively be- fore settling in Ireland. Views are known of Gibral- tar, Sicily and even North Africa although it is not certain that all of them are based on first-hand ex - perience. He moved to Ireland in, or about, 1722. His presence is first noted by Harding’s Impartial Newsletter in 1722 where he is recorded as “lately arrived from London” and as painting sets for the Theatre Royal. Some ten years later he is known to have painted the scenery for a staging of Cephalus and Procris, which was described at the time as “fin - er painted than ever seen in this kingdom”. In addition to his work in the theatre, van der Hagen was busy with other commissions from his earliest days in Ireland which renders suspect Anthomy Pas- quin’s account of his character. He describes the art- ist as a “painter of landscape and shipping in Dublin and other towns in Ireland…This was a most re- markable genius; and had his industry been propor- tioned to his powers, he might have done wonders; but he would never work while he had a shilling; and when pinched by his distress, he would retire to a public house, and paint a picture to liquidate his reckoning”. This hardly accords with the number, ac- complishment and variety of the commissions that van der Hagen completed in the twenty-three years that he was in Ireland. Two years after his arrival he painted an altarpiece for St Michan’s Church, Dublin which has not survived nor has the “painted glory” for St Patrick’s in Waterford. In 1728 he was com- missioned by the tapestry maker Robert Baillie to “take prospects” of the places to be depicted in the six tapestries for the newly built House of Lords. In the end only two of his paintings were worked up into tapestries and these depart from his designs considerably. Presumably connected with this com- mission is his View of Derry and The Landing of King William at Carrickfergus (Ulster Museum). Given his scene painting background and facility for composition, it is not surprising that Van der Hagne also found work as a decorative painter. One eighteenth-century source notes “he painted many houses in this kingdom”; for example at Curraghmore, County Waterford he completed a trompe d’oeil scheme with the staircase decorated with “beautiful paintings by Van der Egan (sic) such as columns, festoons etc between which are several landscapes” while the ceiling was “painted in perspective and rep- resents a dome, the columns seeming to rise, through a flat surface”. Given the tempo - rary nature of these decorative schemes which were so often redone as taste changed it is remarkable that one of van der Hagen’s grisaille rooms has survived almost intact, although now dismantled. This was completed for the Christmas family of Whitfield Court, County Waterford and comprises eighteen panels of gods and goddesses (Pri- vate collection; Ballyfin demesne). Van der Hagen clearly had close ties of patronage with the Waterford area. In addition to these house decorations and the work at St Patrick’s he was commissioned to paint a large view of the city of Waterford for which, in 1736, he was paid £20 by the Corporation.