ADAM'S IRISH OLD MASTERS 14 MAY 2026

year before, in 1737, Thomas Frye (1710-62) painted a very closely comparable small sea tempest on the reverse of his portrait of the East India merchant Hilary Torriano (Victoria and Albert Museum) while, later in the century, Thomas Roberts (1748-77) painted a ‘sea storm’, inspired, if at some remove’, by Vernet (Nation- al Gallery of Ireland). What sounds like a related pair of Van der Hagens to the present lot was in the collection of the Irish artist Henry Brocas, sold in 1869, ‘A Brisk Gale’ and ‘A Shipwreck’. A very closely related version of our storm scene was engraved in mezzotint by the Irish printmaker James Watson (1740-1790) when it was in the collection of the portrait painter Francis Cotes (1726-70), illustrating how Van der Hagen’s art was still appreciated in the metropolis three decades after he painted. Van der Hagen seems to have travelled extensively before settling in Ireland. Views are known or record- ed of Gibraltar, Sicily and even North Africa although it is not certain that all of them are based on first-hand experience. He moved to Ireland in, or about, 1722. His presence here is first noted by Harding’s Impartial Newsletter that year 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 ‘finer painted than ever seen in this kingdom’. In addition to his work in the theatre, from his earliest days in Ireland Van der Hagen was busy with other commissions, which renders suspect Anthony Pas- quin’s account of his character: ‘a painter of landscape and shipping in Dublin and other towns in Ireland… This was a most remarkable genius; and had his in- dustry been proportioned 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 accomplishment 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 commis- sioned by the tapestry maker Robert Baillie to ‘take prospects’ of the places to be depicted in six tapes- tries for the newly-built House of Lords. In the end only two of his compositions were woven and these depart from his designs considerably. It is suggestive, nevertheless, to see Van der Hagen again working here in such close contiguity to Edward Lovett Pearce. Given his scene painting background and facility for composition, it is not surprising that Van der Hagen also found work as a decorative painter. One eight- eenth-century source notes ‘he painted many houses in this kingdom’. At Curraghmore, County Water- ford, he completed a trompe d’oeil scheme with the staircase decorated with ‘beautiful paintings…such as columns, festoons etc between which are several landscapes’. Given the temporary nature of these dec- orative 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 Christ- mas family of Whitfield Court, County Waterford and comprises eighteen panels of gods and goddesses (Ballyfin Demesne, County Laois). Van der Hagen clearly had close ties of patronage with the Waterford area. In addition to his house decorations and the work at St Patrick’s, he was commissioned to paint a large view of the city for which, in 1736, he was paid £20 by the Corporation (Bishop’s Palace, Waterford). He also produced views of Drogheda (Highlanes Gallery), Carton (private collection) and the earliest surviving painting of Cork Harbour (private collection).