ADAM'S IRISH OLD MASTERS 14 MAY 2026

41 TREVOR THOMAS FOWLER (1810-C.1881) Group Portrait of Three Children Oil on canvas, 76 x 63.5cm Signed and dated 1835 € 2,000 - 3,000 Best known for the much-loved Chil- dren Dancing at the Crossroads in the National Gallery of Ireland (fig2), the details of Trevor Thomas Fowler’s career were almost completely lost to the historical record, with Strickland allotting him the most meagre of bi- ographies. However, as noted by Dr Brendan Rooney, who has done much to rescue the artist from oblivion, his achievements as a portrait painter ‘were considerable, and his ‘life story remarkable’ (A.A.I., Vol. 2, p. 263). Fowler was born in Dublin and may have studied at the Royal Academy in London where he exhibited in 1829, for the first and only time. He showed much more extensively back home in Dublin, sending more than forty paintings to the R.H.A. between 1830 and 1844, including landscapes of Carlow and Kilkenny. In the later 1830s Fowler trav- elled extensively in the United States, exhibiting at the National Academy in New York in 1837 and the following year, before moving with his wife and young family to New Orleans where he won notable patronage, painting the former president, Andrew Jackson. On route back to New Orleans from a stay in France, his ship, The Oceana, was wrecked off the coast of Jamaica. Fowl- er ‘helped to orchestrate the rescue of the passengers, personally delivering several people to the safety of a sand- bank, and his gallantry was noted in the Irish press’ (ibid.). All the passengers were saved but Fowler lost his posses- sions including ‘many valuable pictures, paints, brushes’. Back in America, Fowler continued to meet with success, travelling extensively through the Deep South, later settling in Cincinnati and subsequently Germantown, near Phila- delphia, thought travelling back to New Orleans for winters. He finally settled in Philadelphia itself and exhibited with the Pennsylvania Academy. This early portrait by Fowler dates from his time in Ireland and is closely contem- poraneous with Children Dancing at the Crossroads with which it shares a deli- cate application of paint and almost ro- coco palette. If these children are rather more privileged than their bare-footed counterparts in the National Gallery of Ireland, the charming portrayal of the childhood is comparable. For more information see Brendan Rooney ‘’”Cheating the Fell Destroyer”, Trevor Thom- as Fowler’, Irish Arts Review (Autumn, 2011) pp. 112-25. Works by Trevor Thomas Fowler are included in the collections of the National Gallery of Ireland; the National Portrait Gal- lery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC and the Museum of the New York Historical Society.