Beschreibung:

William Ashford PRHA (1746-1824) Wooded River Landscape with Peasants, Cattle, Goats and Sheep before a Ruined Castle Oil on canvas, 59.5 x 75.5cm (23½ x 29¾'') Provenance: Sotheby's London, 'The Irish Sale', March 2011, Lot 1. Born in Birmingham in 1746, William Ashford came to Ireland in 1764 and settled in Dublin, having obtained an appointment in the Ordinance Office. He married in or around 1775 and fathered two sons and a daughter. According to Strickland within three years of his arrival in Dublin, Ashford was exhibiting with the Society of Artists on William Street. At first, he was an amateur painter specializing in flower paintings and still life, but in 1772 he exhibited his first landscape at the Dublin Royal Society of Arts, and turned professional soon after. After Thomas Robertsdeath, Ashford became the pre-eminent landscape painter in Ireland. He was elected President of the Irish Society of Artists in 1813, and was a founding member of the Royal Hibernian Academy, becoming its first elected President in 1823. Strickland comments thathis pictures justify the reputation he enjoyed as the foremost landscape painter of his time in Ireland.Crookshank and Glin, inIrelands Paintersnote that Ashford painted all over Ireland with views recorded in counties the length of the country. However the majority of his work is from the Dublin area, with views in the Phoenix Park, Leixlip and Chapelizod recorded. Most of his works were topographical views of country seats and well-ordered parks and his principal patrons were, therefore, the nobility and landowners. Institutions such as Society of Artists in Ireland, the Academy of Artists in Dublin, and the Cork Society for Promoting Fine Arts exhibited his work. He is also recorded as having exhibited in England, at the Royal Academy in London from 1775 and with the Society of Artists from 1777. The present work, which displays strong similarities with An Idyllic Landscape (NGI 4484), painted for the Dukes of Leinster at Carton and which is dated 1778, is also an idyllic landscape, and stylistically dates to the late 1770s, and reflects the Claudean influence that Ashford so readily absorbed. This classical idealization of the landscape was something that numerous Irish painters of this period reflected in their work and arguably none did it better than Ashford. The composition is executed with the Claudean formula, with its picturesque stone bridge, towering ruined castle dwarfing the figures and animals in the foreground and with its hazy warm evening sky and distant landscape with further ruined buildings beyond. Some opinion has suggested that the scene, while idyllic, may have been based on views in south county Dublin, perhaps looking south towards Wicklow. At the beginning of the 19th centuryprobably between 1804 and 1806he painted a set of landscapes in and around Mount Merrion for Lord Fitzwilliam. The Fitzwilliam commission was the last major one he received, although he continued to paint, and held an exhibition of his works in the board room of the Dublin Societys premises in 1819. During his long career he produced a large number of works, and many of them were engraved, notably in MiltonsViews. William Ashford PRHA (1746-1824) Wooded River Landscape with Peasants, Cattle, Goats and Sheep before a Ruined Castle Oil on canvas, 59.5 x 75.5cm (23½ x 29¾'') Provenance: Sotheby's London, 'The Irish Sale', March 2011, Lot 1. Born in Birmingham in 1746, William Ashford came to Ireland in 1764 and settled in Dublin, having obtained an appointment in the Ordinance Office. He married in or around 1775 and fathered two sons and a daughter. According to Strickland within three years of his arrival in Dublin, Ashford was exhibiting with the Society of Artists on William Street. At first, he was an amateur painter specializing in flower paintings and still life, but in 1772 he exhibited his first landscape at the Dublin Royal Society of Arts, and turned professional soon afte