ADAM'S Country House Collections Day II - 14th October 2025

91 Country House Collections|13 th - 14 th October 2025 641 JAMES LATHAM (1696-1747) Portrait of a gentleman, half-length, in a blue velvet coat and white shirt Oil on canvas, in a feigned oval, 74 x 62cm Provenance: The collection of Senator Edward McGuire, sale, Chris- tie’s and Hamilton and Hamilton Ltd., Newtown Park House, Co. Dub- lin, 20-22 September 1976, lot 489; with Willie Dillon Antiques, Dublin; Private Collection, Co. Wicklow € 4,000 - 6,000 642 CIRCLE OF HENRY PICKERING Portrait of an engineer, half-length, wearing a grey jacket and black cloak, with blueprints behind Oil on canvas, 77.5 x 64.5cm inscribed ‘SELBY/NEWTON/A/PLAN/of the/Navigable Canal/from/...s to SELBY/...ECK Provenance: By repute, Strancally Castle, Co. Waterford; Private Col- lection, Co. Wicklow. € 3,000 - 5,000 The Selby Canal was built in 1778 to connect the meandering riv- ers of Aire and Ouse in Yorkshire in conjunction with the develop- ments undertaken by Aire & Calder Navigation in the 18th century. The nearby city of Leeds had developed a world class reputation for the production of cloth. It was therefore imperative that the produce from the mills in and around Holbeck, Leeds had an efficient route for dispersal through the cloth merchants of the region, linking the industrial heartlands of West Riding with both East and West Coast. The construction of the Selby Canal was one of a great many canals engineered and dug across Great Britain in the late 18th century. The hard labour would have been undertaken by ‘Navvy’s’, of whom many were Irish immigrants. The canal began construction in 1775 under the expertise of re- nowned civil engineers John Smeaton (1724-1792) and his assistant William Jessop (1745-1814). Jessop went on to design and manage a great number of highly important projects, most notably from an Irish perspective, The Grand Canal. The construction of the canal at Selby included a ‘Lazy Cut’ which was a small docking area which enabled the traffic of the canal to dock and load and unload cargo, encourag- ing trade and therefore benefitting the mercantile population of the region. It should be noted that the portrait presented features a nav- igational map of this canal in the background implying an important connection with the unnamed sitter. Therefore, it is most likely that this portrait was commissioned for one of the young engineers em- ployed in its surveyal and construction. The text of the map is partially obscured however one can safely assume that it is some variant of ‘A Plan of the Proposed Navigable Canal from Leeds to Selby including the Township of Holbeck’ as such a plan was published in ‘The Gent’s Magazine’ of 1774. The construction of the Selby Canal, and its various improvements necessitated the expertise of a great many of Britain’s renowned engineers including the afore-mentioned Smeaton and Jessop, as well as John Rennie (1761-1821) and Thomas Telford (1757- 1834). It occupies a very important place in Britain’s industrial history. 640