Sir Frederick William Burton, RHA, (1816-1900)   "Portrait ...

Hammer

€14,000

Sir Frederick William Burton, RHA,
(1816-1900)  

"Portrait of a Woman and Child, probably Caroline Susan Gore-Booth and her son Henry  1840," Watercolour on paper  61cms x 46.5cms (24" x 18 1/4")

Signed with monogram FWB’ and dated 1840

Framed within a Classical arch, this portrait depicts young woman and a child enjoying a tender moment together. Her hair coiffed into fashionable ringlets, the woman wears a velvet dress, with a cameo brooch fastened to the neckline. Leaning against the woman, and dressed in a mock-Elizabethan clothing, the child also sits in an attitude of happy contentment. The subjects of Frederick William Burton’s portraits and genre scenes are generally shown absorbed in their own thoughts, unconscious of the wider world around them. The architectural settings in his paintings, often incorporating columns, staircases and grand windows, convey a sense of privilege. Embellished with foliate ornamentation carved into the stone, the arch in this painting is also home to ivy tendrils, that climb up the stone and hang from the top. The symbolism of this plant would not have been lost on people seeing this portrait when it was first exhibited. In the legend of Tristan and Iseult, popular in Victorian times, ivy binds lovers tightly together. The idea of nature providing a commentary on life, promoted by John Ruskin, was coming into vogue at the time this portrait was painted.

 

Born in Clifden House, on the shores of Inchiquin Lake near Corofin, Co. Clare, in 1816, Frederick William Burton was the son of a gentleman and amateur painter named Samuel Frederick Burton and his wife Hannah Mallet. When Frederick William was ten, the family moved to Dublin, partly in order that he could attend the Drawing Schools of the Dublin Society. Here he was taught by Henry Brocas and Robert West, and became friendly with George Petrie, who introduced him to the study of antiquarian remains in the Irish countryside. After the Drawing Schools, Burton began exhibiting at the Royal Hibernian Academy, showing Abraham on his Journey to Sacrifice Isaac in 1832 when he was just sixteen years old. At the age of twenty-one, he was elected an Associate of the RHA and became a full member two years later. Over the years, Burton painted many portraits of physicians, botanists, mathematicians and clergymen, and of Anglo-Irish families of the West of Ireland. In 1843 he showed at the RHA a portrait of the Galway physician, Sir Henry Marsh, along with portraits of the children of the Rev. William Guinness, of Ardcotton, Co. Sligo. In 1843 also, he showed a portrait of Henry Irwin, Archdeacon of Emly and two years later submitted a portrait of the family of Henry Irwin’s grandson, Sir Robert Gore-Booth, of Lissadell House in Co. Sligo. Robert Gore-Booth is remembered both for his evictions and for his attempts to assist his tenants to emigrate to America.

 

The Gore-Booth family portrait by Burton (preserved at Lissadell House) depicting a woman reading to two young girls, is a tour-de-force in the representation of satin, velvet, lace and other textiles. In 1827, Gore-Booth had married Caroline, second daughter of Robert King, 1st Viscount Lorton, but she died a year later. After two years as widower, he remarried, this time to Caroline Susan, second daughter of Thomas Goold. Caroline Susan had one son, Henry, who succeeded his father as 5th Baronet. Based on the resemblance of sitters in the larger Gore-Booth family portrait, it is likely that the present watercolour is a portrait of Caroline Susan and her son Henry. The portrait has an added poignancy in that it was painted the same year as The Blind Girl at the Holy Well, and just a year before Burton’s masterpiece The Aran Fisherman’s Drowned Child, which depicts the harrowing scene of an island family mourning their lost child. Although he painted mainly members of the landed classes, Burton's privately-held political views are revealed in his friendships within Ireland’s literary and academic world; George Petrie, Lord Dunraven, Eugene O’Curry and Sir Samuel Ferguson were all members of an intellectual elite that sought to develop a cohesive sense of Irish national identity. Between 1838 and 1841, Burton made several trips to the Aran Islands with George Petrie. In 1874 he was appointed Director of National Gallery of London, a position he held for twenty years, during which time he did not paint. He died at Kensington in 1900. His most famous work, Helehil and Hildebrand, or the meeting on the Turret Stairs, is now in the National Gallery of Ireland.

Exhibited : The Beit Wing National Gallery at Frederic William Burton: For the Love of Art Exhibition, October 2017-January 2018.

Dr. Peter Murray, 2022