Stephen Catterson Smith (1806- 1872) (Attributed)  Portrait...

Estimate

€4,000 - €5,000

Stephen Catterson Smith (1806- 1872) (Attributed) 

Portrait of Sir Henry Brooke of Colebrooke, Co. Fermanagh, O.O.C., c. 1840, 142cms high x 116cms wide (56" x 45 1/2"). (1)

Provenance:  Private Collection. Purchased Mealys Auctioneers 2014. 

A young man stands in a landscape, with dark clouds gathering above his head. He wears a black coat and holds a flintlock hunting gun. Behind him can be seen a hunting dog. The style of the portrait suggests that it was likely painted circa 1850, and the artist Stephen Catterson Smith has been convincingly suggested as the artist. The portrait  therefore presents something of a riddle. If painted by Catterson Smith, then it can hardly be a portrait of Sir Henry Brooke. Catterson Smith came to Ireland in 1840, when he was thirty-four years old. If he painted Sir Henry Brooke of Colebrooke, it would have been after 1840. Even if the portrait was painted in England in 1830, when Catterson Smith was a rising star, Sir Henry Brooke would have been sixty years of age. But the handsome dark-haired young man portrayed in the portrait is clearly someone in their twenties, or thirties at the most. Born in 1770, Sir Henry Brooke married Harriet Butler in 1792. He was created 1st Baronet Brooke, of Colebrooke, Co. Fermanagh in 1822. He and Harriet had six children, (none of whom were named Henry). He died in March 1834, six years before Catterson Smith came to Ireland.

Dr. Peter Murray, 2023