ADAM'S IRISH OLD MASTERS 14 MAY 2026

Irish Old Masters| 14 May 2026 www.adams.ie 27 20 WILLIAM ASHFORD, PRHA (1746-1824) Shepherdesses on a path in a Wooded landscape Oil on canvas, 37.7 x 45.5cm € 3,000 - 5,000 Gandon junior noting that he had arrived in Dublin ‘at a time favourable for his professional exertions’ with the excitement surrounding ‘Grattan’s Parlia- ment’ and the rise of the Volunteer movement. In late 1783, or early the following year, Wheatley returned to London. Certainly by the summer of 1784, when he exhibited at the RA for the first time in four years, he was living at 36 Gerrard Street, Soho. The fruits of his time in Ireland were clearly apparent at the Royal Academy summer show and included a View of the Salmon Leap at Leixlip (Yale Center for British Art) and a View of Donnybrook Fair . He was elected to associ- ate membership of the Royal Academy in 1790 and to full membership the following year. Wheatley was de- scribed in anobituary as ‘a very personable man, fond of dress and polite in his manners, which made him a great favourite with the ladies’ (Gentleman’s Mag- azine, Sept. 1801). Mrs Wheatley, shown here, had been one of his pupils, and on his death she married the Cork-born portraitist and actor Alexander Pope.