Adam's IRISH OLD MASTERS 5th November 2024

Irish Old Masters| 5 November 2024 www.adams.ie 53 Anne Crookshank and the Knight of Glin describe Roberts as ‘the most brilliant’ of the Dublin School of landscape which flourished in the second half of the eighteenth-century. William Laffan in the Art and Architecture of Ireland writes ‘In the short span of his career, Roberts produced a body of consistently accomplished, gently lyrical work that justifies his description as the finest Irish landscape painter of the eighteenth century’ (AAI, 2, 435). Born in Waterford in 1748, Roberts would be dead a mere twenty-eight years later and his work is accordingly extremely rare. His father, John, was Waterford’s leading architect who designed both Catholic and Protestant cathe - drals in the city, a distinction seemingly unique in Europe; his mother, Mary Sautelle, was of Huguenot descent. After a basic education in his native city, Roberts entered the Dublin Society Schools where he studied under James Mannin. He also apprenticed with George Mullins (who had Waterford connec - tions) and, according to an early source, was ‘im - proved’ by Cork artist John Butts. Roberts emerges as a fully formed, and highly distinctive, artist in two works which he exhibited at the Society of Artists in Ireland in 1769: a View of Rathfarnham Castle (private collection) and the famous Frost Piece (private col - lection). These ambitious and confident early works, so different from the contemporary productions of, say, Robert Carver, forcibly announced the arrival of a major new talent on the Dublin scene and the removal of Carver and George Barret to London, left the Irish market for landscapes open to Roberts and his close contemporary, William Ashford. In all, over an eleven-year period up to 1777 he showed about sixty works at the William Street exhibitions. There is evidence to suggest that Roberts painted en plein air, a highly unusual approach in northern Europe at this date. Certainly, in two instances Roberts shows himself painting out-doors and the great delicacy and subtlety with which he captures the fall of light, here, and the beauty of the limpid sky, could well be explained by his precocious adoption of this unortho- dox practice. Roberts was a much more advanced, and complex, landscape artist than his restrained, even understated, works at first glance might sug - gest. In general, his landscapes are built up with the most delicate of paint glazes, and he eschews the more robust impasto of artists such as George Barret in favour of a thin paint surface. The close relationships of friendship, family and political alliance between Roberts’s patrons is noteworthy – and it seems that Roberts was recom - mended from commission to commission by satisfied noble clients. This helps explain his rapid ascent to the position – while still in his twenties – of the most sought-after landscape painter in Ireland. Roberts’s art could, however, also bridge political divides and perhaps the two most pleasing works in his entire oeuvre were painted for Lord Harcourt, the Viceroy, to whom another client, Lord Charlemont, was politically opposed. Roberts brought the art of Irish demesne painting to its peak in two sets of views showing Lucan, county Dublin, and Carton, county Kildare. Although he exhibited regularly and extensively in Dublin, Roberts sent work to the London exhibitions only occasionally and, unlike Mullins or Barret, did not show at the Royal Academy. Despite this, his one pro - fessional foray outside Ireland was for the enormously prestigious commission from Sir Watkin Williams Wynn for two large landscapes to decorate the stair hall of his vast townhouse, newly built to designs by Robert Adam, in St James’s Square. Roberts was paid the sum of £53 10s for the Wynn commission on 3 April 1775, by which date he was at work on his last, and most important commission to paint the de- mesne of Carton, recently inherited by the 2nd Duke of Leinster. However, ill health prevented him from completing the six pictures originally planned and, in late November or December, Roberts left Ireland for the warmer climes of Lisbon where he did not survive long, dying in March 1777. Two hundred years later Michael Wynne hailed Roberts as ‘most affirmatively one of the finest landscape painters in Great Britain or Ireland’ in the third quarter of the eighteenth century ( Studies , Winter, 1977). We are grateful to William Laffan and Brendan Rooney for their assistance in cataloguing this lot.