Cream of the crop

THE 19TH CENTURY American artist Howard Helmick spent time in Ireland observing rural life and his picture Couples Making Hay features a young man wearing a Tam o’ Shanter. According to a catalogue note by Dr Claudia Kinmonth, the hat, most commonly thought of as Scottish headgear, was “often used around Galway where Helmick had a studio”.

The painting, priced at €12,850, is one of the highlights in the Gorry Gallery’s new exhibition and sale.

Also of interest is Summer, View of the Liffey at Woodlands, County Dublin, described as “a fine painting and worthy of careful inspection” in The Irish Times review of the annual exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy in May 1863. It sold for £60. Now, almost 150 years later, readers can once again see the picture, still in its original frame, with an asking price of €65,000.

The artist was James Richard Marquis, a builder’s son who lived in Park House, Baldoyle and the painting is a view from a high vantage spot within the grounds of Luttrellstown Demesne (Castleknock) – an estate then known as Woodlands.

The gallery is also showing a selection titled “The Grand Tour: Irish Artists in Italy” featuring paintings by 18th century artists James Barry, Hugh Douglas Hamilton, Robert Fagan and Robert Crone who followed in the footsteps of touring aristocrats and depicted the landscapes and cultural influences considered essential to western civilisation.

Robert Crone’s Morning: A Classical Landscape with Shepherds leading their Flock to Pasture, which has come from a private collection in the United States, is for sale at €120,000.

The exhibition and sale of 18th to 21st century Irish paintings and antique prints is at the Gorry Gallery, 20 Molesworth Street, Dublin 2 from May 29th to June 11th. See gorrygallery.ie.