John Henry Campbell (1757-1839) A View of the Dargle, Tinneh...

Estimate

€8,000 - €12,000

John Henry Campbell (1757-1839) A View of the Dargle, Tinnehinch and Powerscourt, County Wicklow Signed and dated 1805 Oil on canvas, 71.5 x 93cm (28¼ x 36½) This unusually large and ambitious work by John Henry Campbell shows the famed landscape of Tinnehinch in County Wicklow which had been admired by Arthur Young in 1776: ‘Returning to Tinnyhinch I went to Inniskerry [sic], and gained by this detour, in my return to go to the Dargle, a beautiful view which I should otherwise have lost. The road runs on the edge of a declivity from whence there is a most pleasing prospect of the river’s course through the vale and past the wood of Power’s Court, which here appear in large masses of dark shade, and the whole bounded by mountains’. Campbell shows both Tinnehinch and, in this distance, Richard Castle’s great house of Powerscourt with its flanking towers crowned by their copper domes. The Wicklow hills in the distance are framed between two repoussoir clumps of trees, while travellers, goats and cattle add variety to the foreground. Tinnehinch had long been appreciated for its scenic qualities. It was painted by Jonathan Fisher (Fota, County Cork) and twice by Thomas Roberts (private collection and Crawford Art Gallery, Cork). However after funds were voted by the Irish parliament to Henry Grattan to acquire an estate in the river valley, national and political resonances quickly adhered to the site, and this was particularly marked after the Act of Union dashed Grattan’s hopes for an independent Irish parliament. When Campbell’s daughter Cecilia Margaret exhibited a view of Tinnehinch at the Royal Hibernian Academy it was described as ‘looking towards Mr Grattan’s house’. A related watercolour by Campbell dated 1801 shows a similar disposition between the two houses and is inscribed by the artist ‘‘Tenehinch [sic] & Powerscourt from the Dargle’. Born in Herefordshire in 1757, Campbell moved to Dublin at an early age where his father, Richard, worked, and ultimately formed a partnership with the leading printing firm Graisbery’s. In 1802 Graisberry & Campbell was appointed printer to the Dublin Society, printing its county surveys, a suggestive counterpart to John Henry’s visual mapping of Ireland, and particularly Wicklow’s topography. Campbell studied at the Dublin Society Schools and initially seems to have been a versatile practitioner working as a scene painter, caricaturist as well as painting portraits. Soon however, he settled down to paint the Irish landscape in oil and more frequently watercolour. Early works include a drawing in the National Gallery of Ireland which is dated 1793 while in 1800 he exhibited a drawing, Moonlight, at William Allen’s Map and Print Warehouse, at 32 Dame Street Dublin. The following year, from an address of 13 Trinity Street, he showed two landscapes drawings at the Society of Artists in Ireland at Parliament House. He continued to exhibit in Dublin, at the Society of Artists and at the inaugural show of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1826. Campbell painted scenes all over Ireland including Killarney and Wicklow but also Lough Erne and Dunluce Castle, County Antrim. Having connections with Dublin printers since childhood, it does not surprise that he also worked for publishers. His drawing of the new Sarah Bridge, at Islandbridge, featured in J Ferrar’s Views of Ancient and Modern Dublin (1797). Strickland writes ‘Campbell’s works are pleasing and well painted, and as an artist, he ranks high among contemporary Irish painters’.