B.
Green with envy
Behind the scenes
Here's a little collection of works in our collection with links to the Emerald Isle
This chap's interesting: a Huguenot immigrant who grew rich as a banker in Dublin and whose family name lives on in the accounting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu.
Charles Jervas was born in Clonlisk, County Offaly, and is mentioned by name in Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock:
Then smile Belinda at reproachful tongues
Still warm our hearts, and still inspire our songs
But would your charms to distant times extend
Let Jervas paint them, and let Pope commend
Who censure most, more precious hairs would lose
To have the Rape recorded by his Muse.
The picturesque River Dargle is best known from the song Waxie's Dargle, here given the treatment by The Pogues:
And finally today - though there are certainly more in our collection - Caractacus by Dubliner John Henry Foley:
Related
Collection
John Keyse Sherwin David La Touche Esqr of Belvue, in the County of Wicklow
The subject of this painting is the banker David La Touche II (1703-1785). It is after a painting, now lost, by Hugh Douglas Hamilton (1740-1808).
Belvue, usually written Bellevue, was the La Touche estate near Delgany in County Wicklow. It was demolished in the 1950s
Compare National Gallery of Ireland item NGI.10896
Collection
Charles Jervas Elisabeth, Lady Oxendon, Daughter of Edmd Dunch
Elizabeth Oxenden (1703–1779) was the eldest daughter of Elizabeth Godfrey, a maid of honour to Queen Anne, and Edmund Dunch, master of the royal household. She was seventeen in 1720 when she married George Oxenden, a sitting MP and future Lord of the Admiralty. George became notorious as a squanderer and profligate, and fathered children to others, including two to Elizabeth’s sister, who was married to his closest friend and died in childbirth.
(Out of Time, 23 September 2023 – 28 April 2024)
Collection
John Foley Caractacus
Caractacus was an early chieftain of the Britons, celebrated in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British art and literature for resisting the Romans. Dublin-born, London-based sculptor John Henry Foley cast this bronze statuette the year after his original two-metre-high version in white marble was installed in the Egyptian Hall at the Lord Mayor of London’s Mansion House residence.
(Out of Time, 23 September 2023 – 28 April 2024)