Adam's IRISH OLD MASTERS 5th November 2024

50 40 THOMAS ROBERTS (1748-1777) Landscape with a pool and bridge, a horse watering Oil on wood panel, 43 x 54 cm Provenance: Mess. E. Foster & Son, 54 Pall Mall, February 1907 (as by ‘Julius Caesar Ibbetson, 1759-1817) Sir Drummond Cospatric Spencer-Smith (1876- 1955); Sotheby’s, 22 June 1949, lot 71 (as by Ibbetson); Sir Ivo Mallet (1900-1988) (as by Ibbetson); Private collection, Ireland €40,000-60,000 Although painted by one of the most distinctive artists of the eighteenth century, this fine work by Thomas Roberts masqueraded for more than a century under the name of Julius Caesar Ibbetson (1759-1817) – a small but telling instance of how the important school of art that flourished in Geor - gian Ireland has been subsumed into, or rather appropriated by, that of a neighbouring island. Its correct attribution, only recently confirmed, can be demonstrated by a comparison with a work in the National Gallery of Ireland of very similar composition, if somewhat compromised in terms of condition (William Laffan and Brendan Roon - ey, Thomas Roberts, Landscape and Patronage in 18th-Century Ireland , 2009, 380-81). In both, and a third related work, figures – or here a single woman – cross a precariously spindly bridge; trees sprout from a rocky outcrop shrouded in shadows while, on the left, the landscape opens up to the distance. There are noticeable differenc- es, however, between this and the NGI painting. Instead of two horses at the water’s edge, in the present work Roberts introduces the rather more