William Ashford 1746-1824  "A Landscape based on Dawson Gr...

Hammer

€15,000

William Ashford 1746-1824 

"A Landscape based on Dawson Grove, Co. Monaghan, with the artist sketching, 1785" O.O.C.,   17" x 24" (42 x 62cms), 

Signed (on urn pedestal) ‘WAshford’ and dated 1785

Bears label  J. S. Maas & Co Ltd  New Bond Street


Although William Ashford is best known today for his views of Dublin, commissioned by Viscount Fitzwilliam, in the late eighteenth century he painted landscapes and houses throughout Ireland, including at Tourin on the Blackwater River, Maynooth Castle, Powerscourt, and Charleville in Co. Offaly. In the foreground of this Claudean landscape, a view of the Dawson Grove estate in Co. Monaghan, Ashford depicts an artist; presumably a self-portrait. Seated, with a large sketchbook on his knees, the artist looks across a river valley, with woods and mountains in the distance. On the right stands a large urn on a pedestal, close to the corner of a Palladian temple. While the location is identifiable, Ashford has taken some liberties with the landscape, including moving the temple—in fact a mausoleum to Lady Anne Dawson, wife of Thomas Dawson—to a new location on the hillside. Designed by James Wyatt and built in 1770, the mausoleum was (and is) on Black Island, on Dromore Lough. Ten years later, Thomas Dawson replaced the old Dawson Grove house with a new Georgian mansion. This painting was evidently commissioned not long afterwards. Thomas’s son Richard, who followed him into politics, died young, and was commemorated also with a memorial designed by James Wyatt, in this case a classical column, erected in 1809. The urn depicted by Ashford, a copy of the Borghese Urn in Rome, may once have been at Dawson Grove, or may have been introduced into the composition for artistic effect. With building projects and improvements being carried out over the course of the eighteenth century, Dawson Grove was depicted by several artists, including Paul Sandby, whose view of the mausoleum at an early stage of its construction was engraved by William Walker and published in Sandby’s 1778 The Virtuosi's Museum. The artist Thomas Roberts also painted several views of Dawson Grove in 1770. Destroyed by fire in 1846, the Georgian house at Dawson Grove was replaced by a large Victorian mansion, named Dartrey House, which in turn has since been demolished.

Born in Birmingham, William Ashford moved to Dublin in 1764 where he worked in the Ordnance Office, a government post which involved touring around the country, inspecting munitions stores. Ashford sketched as he travelled, developing his skills as a topographical artist. However his first paintings were flower pieces, and it was not until 1772 that he began to exhibit landscape paintings, at the Society of Artists of Ireland. The following year he exhibited his first painting of Dawson Grove at the Society’s exhibition. From then on, Ashford became celebrated for his idealised landscapes, receiving commissions from several landowners to record their demesnes. He delighted in depicting lush, well-tended country scenes, complete with lakes, fields and trees, and would often use a building as the focal point for a composition, as in his view of Cloughoughter Castle in Co. Cavan (Fota House). Unlike many of the generation that succeeded him, Ashford was neither a revolutionary nor a Romantic painter, but one who delighted in depicting peaceful estates and houses. If he encountered distressing scenes on his travels, he left no visual record of them. Greatly esteemed in his own lifetime, in 1813 he was elected President of the Society of Artists of Ireland, and a decade later became President of the newly-founded Royal Hibernian Academy. He died at his home in Dublin, in 1824.
 
Provenance: Christie's London, 3 July 1964, lot 128 (as An extensive view of Dawson Grove, County Cavan, with an artist sketching below a classical urn in the grounds of the Doric Mausoleum)
With J. Maas, London (according to a label on the reverse)
Private Collection, Ireland.

Dr. Peter Murray, 2022

More Information

See extra images