Ashford, William (1746 Birmingham - 1824) attributed to "Return of the Fishermen on the Beach", oil on canvas, 36x50cm, 45x59,5cm with frame, canvas mounted *1960/2217/003 (internal) Ashford, William (1746 Birmingham - 1824) zugeschrieben "Rückkehr der Fischer am Strand", Öl auf Leinwand, 36x50cm, 45x59,5cm mit Rahmen, Leinwand doubliert *1960/2217/003 (intern)
William Ashford (1746 - 1824) Figures by the Temple in the Park at Mount Merrion, Co. Dublin, with Dublin and Dublin Bay in the background Oil on canvas, 91.4 x 128.3 (36 x 50½'') Provenance: Christie’s 17 April 1964 (lot 46); Collection of Desmond Guinness; Christie’s 15 July 1983 (lot 25); Collection of the Hon. Francis D. Murnaghan Jr., thence by descent. Literature: Edward Malins and the Knight of Glin, Lost Demesnes, Irish Landscape Gardening 1660-1845 (London. 1976) p. 105, fig 116 Anne Crookshank, ‘A Life Devoted to Landscape Painting, William Ashford (c. 1746-1824)’, Irish Arts Review Yearbook (1995) p. 128, no. 45 Finola O’Kane, William Ashford’s Mount Merrion: The Absent Point of View (Tralee, 2012) passim Situated on an elevated site to the southeast of the Dublin, Mount Merrion, the suburban retreat of the Viscounts Fitzwilliam, was a comparatively small demesne but it overlooked the 2,700 acre estate of the family which stretched from Merrion Square to Bray. Between 1804 and 1806 Ashford painted for the Fitzwilliams what has been termed his ‘last great commission of estate views’ (O’Kane, op. cit.), a series of oils and an album of twenty-four drawings. Ashford’s patron, the 7th Viscount Fitzwilliam (1745-1816), was described by a contemporary as a ‘great encourager of the Fine Arts [who] was very liberal to those whose merits be appreciated’, among whom was the miniaturist Horace Hone, in whose London house the viscount lodged, and Ashford himself who was on friendly, as much as professional, terms with his patron. At his English home near Windsor, Fitzwilliam assembled ‘a magnificent library of book, prints, and other productions connected with the fine arts’. A somewhat idiosyncratic member of the Irish House of Lords with ‘a more complex life than is initially apparent’ (ibid.), he did not marry but had three children with 97 the French dancer Mademoiselle Zacharie and, rather more unusually, had, it has been suggested crypto-Catholic leanings. Fitzwilliam was himself an accomplished artist and founder of the museum in Cambridge which bears his name to which he bequeathed six of Ashford’s oil paintings of Mount Merrion in addition to the album of drawings. At least one further example from the series is preserved at Wilton, in Wiltshire, home to the Earls of Pembroke who inherited the Fitzwilliam estate from the 7th Viscount. Here Ashford paints a summerhouse or teahouse in the form of a classical temple cited to avail of the spectacular views that Mount Merrion afforded. The painting is close in general composition to one of the set in the Fitzwilliam Museum though with numerous differences in the charmingly configured figures and animals which animate the foreground which is further enlivened by the dappled fall of sunlight. The view of Dublin in the distance is captured with great dexterity and it was for this view that Mount Merrion was famed. In November 1761 George Montague wrote to Horace Walpole on the view from this spot, and seems to have been one of the earliest to make what would become a very hackneyed comparison: ‘Nothing near Naples can be more beautiful, with such a view of the sea…as would make your Thames blush for Richmond Hill and Isleworth… such ships, such mountains, such as [the] hill of Hothe [sic] as makes one not wish for any other embellishments’. Ashford was a resident of the area overlooked by Mount Merrion. In, or about, 1782 he had moved from College Green in the city centre to Sandymount (‘a residence more suitable to the habits and taste of a landscape painter’) and commissioned his friend, the great architect James Gandon, to build a villa on a plot leased from Fitzwilliam. Finola O’Kane characterizes the Mount Merrion commission as ‘among the most significant of all the demesne landscape series in the Irish tradition, deftly describing Dublin’s late Georgian landscape at a time when it was veering to the east and moving inexorably towards the sea’. William Ashford was born in Birmingham and christened in St Martin’s parish church on 20 May 1746. At the age of about eighteen, however, he moved to Ireland, taking the position of clerk to the comptroller of the laboratory section of the Ordnance Office in Dublin Castle, which he held until 1788. Apart from occasional visits to England and Wales, it was in Ireland that Ashford spent his lifetime. He became Dublin’s most successful landscape painter of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, succeeding Thomas Roberts who died prematurely in 1777. In 1767, aged twenty-one, Ashford submitted his first works to the Society of Artists in Ireland, an organisation of artists who had constructed an octagonal exhibition room for annual displays in William Street, a move which galvanized art production in Ireland. Ashford’s early exhibits were not in the landscape genre for which he is almost exclusively known today. Instead he showed two still-lifes, both titled A Group of Flowers. A work of this title, dated 1766, survives in the National Gallery of Ireland and is likely to be one of these exhibits. Over the following years Ashford exhibited subjects including dead game, fruit and A Trout from Nature. It was only in 1772 that landscapes, both topographical and demesne, appeared in the exhibitions and hereafter Ashford spent his entire long career painting the Irish landscape in all its manifestations. On Roberts’s death in Lisbon, where he had sought respite for the consumption which afflicted him, Ashford completed his rival’s great set of views of Carton, County Kildare, with two rather different pictures. Clearly in favour with the ducal Fitzgeralds, he won another important early commission for a pair of views of their ancestral home at Maynooth Castle which he exhibited in William Street in 1780. Ashford also contributed to Thomas Milton’s engraved views of Irish seats including portrayals of Belan, County Kildare (1783), Bessborough, County Kilkenny (1785) and Ballyfin, County Laois (1787). In the years after 1780 Ashford’s style broadens somewhat and when a group of his works was offered for sale in 1794, his stylistic progression could be assumed as public knowledge with the advertisement referring to ‘two landscapes in his first style’. Ashford continued to produce exceptional work in the following decades, noticeably the Charleville Forest series of 1801, which illustrates a full understanding of Picturesque theory as it had been codified by William Gilpin (1724-1804) and others in the previous decades. When the Charleville pictures were exhibited in the former Parliament House on College Green in 1801 an anonymous diarist was full of praise: ‘There is here abundant scope for an exertion of the artist’s genius in the delineation of foliage. The articulation is perfect and the colouring so beautifully rich, and various, that I could with pleasure have spent hours in viewing them’. In addition to demesne landscapes and topographical views, notable among them a magnificent pair showing Dublin Bay looking north and south (Adam’s, 1 June 2022), Ashford painted a few landscapes with literary narratives, such as Jacques contemplating the wounded stag, a subject taken from Shakespeare’s As You Like It (private collection). One of his most famous works, selected for the cover of Anne Crookshank and the Knight of Glin’s The Painters of Ireland (1978), shows tourists in search of the antiquarian picturesque exploring the ruins of Cloghoughter Castle, County Cavan. Over the course of his long life, Ashford grew rich and painted less, but increasingly became one of the key cultural figures in Dublin in the early decades of the nineteenth. Already in 1801 the anonymous diarist described him as ‘decidedly the first landscape painter’, and it is difficult to cavil at Strickland’s assessment that his ‘pictures justify the reputation he enjoyed as the foremost landscape painter of his time in Ireland’.
WILLIAM ASHFORD (ATTRIBUTED) c. 1746 Birmingham - 1824 Dublin THE RETURN OF THE FISHERMEN, THE SCENE WITH A VIEW OF THE CASTLE Oil on canvas, relined. 35;5 x 51 cm (F. 44.5 x 60 cm). Restored. Frame. Provenance: Private collection, Germany. WILLIAM ASHFORD (ZUGESCHRIEBEN) c. 1746 Birmingham - 1824 Dublin DIE RÜCKKEHR DER FISCHER, DIE SZENE MIT BLICK AUF DAS SCHLOSS Öl auf Leinwand, doubliert. 35,5 x 51 cm (R. 44,5 x 60 cm). Rest. Rahmen. Provenienz: Privatsammlung, Deutschland.
William Ashford, English, Irish, 1746 to 1824, oil painting on panel board, Ireland, depicting an estate landscape view, 1785. Probably signed lower right. Framed. A paper label showing detailed information about the artwork, on the backside. William Ashford is known for Landscape painting, estates and parklands. Born in Birmingham, England William Ashford was an English artist who painted exclusively in Ireland, becoming along with George Barret, Senior and Thomas Roberts, one of the leading painters of the Irish landscape. His uncomplicated topographical compositions, complete with their well ordered estates and parklands, were designed to satisfy the concerns of his landowning clientele and thus lacked the romance and atmosphere achieved by other leading Irish landscape artists. One of a kind artwork.
William Ashford PPRHA (1746 - 1824) A Pair of Views of Dublin Bay, Looking North and South Oil on canvas, 73 x 136cm (28¾ x 53½) Provenance: Commissioned by Thomas Dawson, 1st Baron Dartrey (1725 - 1813) and painted 1774-75; Sold, Christie's, Pall Mall, London, on Wednesday, March 6, 1776, as William Ashford 'Two Views of the Bay of Dublin'; Having lost the correct attribution, which has only recently been recovered, they were sold anonymously at Christie's, 23 July 1887, lots 124 and 126 as 'Monamy' [Peter Monamy 1681 - 1749], A Coast Scene with Shipping and (A Coast Scene with Boats) (this indicated by a Christie's stencil). The pictures have been in private ownership since the 1887 sale. An extensive separate catalogue accompanies this lot.
William Ashford (ca.1746-1824) (attrib.), landscape painter in Ireland. Irish landscape on a lake with low-hanging clouds over a rocky coast, cows and staffage figures, oil on wood, unsigned, old horizontal crack, tapped and retouched, on frame plaque attributed to Ashford, 54 x 68 cm, framed 70 x 83 cm.
WILLIAM ASHFORD, P.R.H.A. (BIRMINGHAM C.1746-1824 DUBLIN) A Weir on the River Clodiagh at Charleville Forest, Co. Offaly, Ireland signed and dated 'W. Ashford 1801' (lower right) oil on canvas 40 x 50…
WILLIAM ASHFORD, P.R.H.A. (BIRMINGHAM C.1746-1824 DUBLIN) The River Clodiagh at Charleville Forest, Co. Offaly, with the castellated farm buildings and gothic dairy in the distance signed and dated…
William Ashford PRHA (1746-1824)Wooded River Landscape with Peasants, Cattle, Goats and Sheep before a Ruined CastleOil 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 Roberts death, 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 that his pictures justify the reputation he enjoyed as the foremost landscape painter of his time in Ireland. Crookshank and Glin, in Irelands Painters note 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 century probably between 1804 and 1806 he 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 Miltons Views.
WILLIAM ASHFORD (BIRMINGHAM C.1746-1824 DUBLIN) A wooded landscape with a herder and his flock on a path, ruins beyond signed and dated 'W. Ashford / 1809' (lower centre) oil on canvas 21 1/8 x 29 1/2 in. (53.6 x 75 cm.) PROVENANCE: Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 20 November 1981, lot 75. Anonymous sale; James Adams & Sons Ltd., Dublin, 20 November 1986, lot 118. Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 14 May 2004, lot 23, where acquired by the present owner. LITERATURE: A. Crookshank, 'A Life devoted to Landscape Painting: William Ashford', Irish Arts Review Yearbook, XI, 1995, p. 130, no. 77.
WILLIAM ASHFORD PRHA (1746-1824)A Watermill near Lucan (1791)Oil on canvas, 69 x 101cm (27 x 39¾'')SignedProvenance: Sotheby's London, 26th March, 1975, Lot 13: With Cynthia O'Connor & Co., Dublin; Sotheby's London, 13th March, 1985, Lot 81; James Adam, Dublin, 10th December, 1997, Lot 31 where purchased by family member of current owner. Exhibited: Dublin, Cynthia O'Connor & Co., 1975 'Irish Paintings and Drawings', Cat no. 1Literature: Col. Grant, Old English Landscape Painters from the XVI century to the XIX century, (London, 1959), Vol IV, p. 266. illus. p.266, no.275.Anne Crookshank, 'A Life devoted to Landscape Painting: William Ashford', Irish Arts Review, Yearbook 1995, Vol 11, p. 119 - 130, illus, p.127, Cat. No.62Born 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 Roberts death, 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 that His pictures justify the reputation he enjoyed as the foremost landscape painter of his time in Ireland. Crookshank and Glin, in Irelands Painters note 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.The present work, A Watermill near Lucan, painted in 1791 is described in the Cynthia OConnor & Co. catalogue that today, a similar view can be observed from the bridge over the Griffin stream, with the town (Lucan) in the distance on the left and Moat Hill on the right. While only part of the mill remains, the race still runs under what is now the paved road. The figures on the hill in the picture walk, we presume, in the grounds of Canon Brook House, where James Gandon, Ashfords close friend, lived for fifteen years. 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. From 1806 he showed at the newly established British Institution. At the beginning of the 19th century - probably between 1804 and 1806 - he 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 Miltons Views. His use of a warm continental palette suggests the influence of painters such as Claude Lorraine and Richard Wilson. In turn Ashfords influence is seen in the work of artists such as James Arthur OConnor and others in the early years of the 19th century.
William Ashford PRHA (1746-1824)The Scalp in the County of Wicklow, on the Estate of Lord Viscount PowerscourtOil on panel, 24 x 33.5cm (9½ x 13¾'')Provenance: Christies, London, 3rd Jluy 1964, lot 131; James Adam, Dublin 29th May, 2002, lot 33, where purchased by a family member of the present owner. Exhibited: Society of Artists in Ireland, 1780, no.6Literature: Col. Grant, Old English Landscape Painters from the XVI century to the XIX century, (London,1959), Vol IV, p. 266, illus. p.266, no. 275.Anne Crookshank, A Life devoted to Landscape Painting: William Ashford, Irish Arts Review, Yearbook 1995, Vol 11, p.119 - 130, illus. p.127, Cat. No. 62Literature: Anne Crookshank, 'A Life devoted to Landscape Painting: William Ashford', Irish Arts Review, yearbook 1995, Vol 11, p. 119-130, Cat. No. 19A version of this view is engraved, Thomas Milton's 'Views of Seats', 1783, second set, Pl. viii
William Ashford (Birmingham c. 1746-1824 Dublin) A wooded landscape with a herder and his flock on a path, ruins beyond oil on canvas 21 1/8 x 29 ½ in. (53.6 x 75 cm.)
WILLIAM ASHFORD P.R.H.A. (BIRMINGHAM 1746-1824 DUBLIN) Views of Maynooth Castle the former signed and dated ‘W. Ashford/1779’ (lower left); and the latter signed and dated ‘W. Ashford/1780’ (lower left) a pair, oil on canvas 61.1 x 83.1cm (24 1/16 x 32 11/16in). (2)
ATTRIBUTED TO WILLIAM ASHFORD (ENGLISH, 1746-1824) A wooded landscape with cattle, a castle in the middle distance. A coastline and mountains beyond, probably the Wicklow mountains Oil on canvas (unlined)24 x 30 inches (61 x 76 cm.)
William Ashford (Birmingham 1746-1824 A wooded river landscape looking towards the Sugar Loaf from the Scalp, Co... oil on canvas 43 ¾ x 57 1/8 in. (111.2 x 145.1 cm.)
William Ashford P.R.H.A. (Birmingham c. 1746- 1824 Dublin) A view of the bridge at Charleville Castle, Tullamore, Co Offaly, a figure on the bridge and ...
WILLIAM ASHFORD (1746-1824) A View of Dawson's Grove, Co. Monaghan (c.1774) Oil on canvas, 96 x 148cm ; together with two prints by Pouncy after William Ashford, engraved after the original painting This work is typical of the Claudean style topographical views of estates or demesne paintings, produced by Irish landscape painters of the eighteenth century. Not the first artist to produce landscapes of Dawson Grove, Ashford's contemporary, Thomas Roberts 1748-77), had around the early 1770s, been commissioned to paint a series of six views, which Ashford may well have studied before painting his own landscape (Laffan and Rooney, pp. 92-93, 106). Born in Birmingham, William Ashford moved to Dublin in 1764, initially employed by the Ordnance Office, and his work involved travel throughout Ireland. He first contributed landscapes to the Society of Artists of Ireland exhibition of 1772. From the mid 1770s Ashford became known for his demesne paintings, later works including a set of five paintings of Charleville Forest, Co. Offaly (dated 1801) for Charles Bury, first Earl of Charleville (1764-1835) and six oils of Mount Merrion Park for Richard, seventh Viscount Fitzwilliam (1804-06, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge). His architectural inclusions were convincingly painted, most notably the Palladian villa in The Royal Charter School, Clontarf, Co. Dublin (1794, NGI). Much respected in his own lifetime, in 1813 he was elected President of the SAI and in 1823, the year before he died, first President of the newly formed Royal Hibernian Academy. The house, Dawson Grove, Rockcorry, Co. Monaghan, seen on the right of the view, was the seat of Thomas Dawson MP, who was created Baron Dartrey (1770), Viscount Cremorne (1785) and later Baron Cremorne (1797). Built around 1770 in brick, it consisted of three storeys over a basement, with a pedimented breakfront and was probably inspired by the designs of Edward Lovett Pearce for the nearby Bellamont Forest (1730). In 1778, Dawson Grove was mentioned by the Rev. Daniel Beaufort as: 'a new brick building, neat and well contrived but rather heavy both in its external appearances and inside decorations' (cited by Bence-Jones, p. 100). Destroyed by fire, Dawson Grove was replaced in 1846 by Dartrey, an Elizabethan Revival mansion (demolished c. 1950). Ashford can be placed at Dawson Grove in June 1773. The Rev. Burrows, tutor of Richard Dawson, noted that 'Mr. Ashwood' had been inspired by the landscape, telling him in lyrical terms: 'he could employ himself many years in painting the variety of its beauties, since every ten yards affords a new and pleasing landscape, and the horizon is every way bounded by such a fine wavy line of mountains, which come forward, retire backwards, or lose themselves in the clouds, in a thousand agreeable figures' (cited in Painting Ireland, p. 158). He did indeed produce more than one work here: the first recorded work is that entitled A View of Dawson's Grove which he exhibited with the Society of Artists in 1773 (G. Breeze, Society of Artists in Ireland, Index of Exhibits, 1765-80, Dublin, 1985, I); the second is the subject of this entry and is probably the View of Dawson's Grove, which he exhibited with the Academy of Artists, Dublin in 1774. A third exists (1785, private collection) with a view looking towards the house from Black Island, on Lough Dromore. In the early 1770s, Lord Dartrey had built a Neoclassical mausoleum designed by James Wyatt (1747-1813) in memory of his first wife, Anne neé Fermor (1733-69), with a sculptural monument to her by Joseph Wilton (1722-1803). In the foreground of this more Neoclassical composition, Ashford includes himself painting en plein air, beside a classical urn, with the mausoleum at his back. The subject of the present entry with its panoramic view including the house and the estate was produced from the vantage point of a drumlin overlooking the lake, mid way between St John's Church on the left and the recently built house on right. Much of the foreground is given over to the fields, which are shown skirted with a variety of trees. As is typical of Ashford, the treatment of foliage is assured, and his penchant for early autumnal tints, can be seen here, where the colour of the leaves appears to be turning. In the distance, Ashford's 'fine wavy line of mountains' are shown in pale blue tones. Influenced by seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painting, pastoral figures and live stock add genre interest to the scene. In centre foreground two milkmaids are shown, one appears to be carrying a lamb under her arm, while in front of her, another is at work in the process of milking. To the right a farm labourer, passing a group of farm animals, walks up the hill towards them. A manuscript label on the reverse of the painting, provides the date of 1774, making it one of Ashford's earliest surviving works. In 1776 the landscape was engraved by the British topographical printmaker, Benjamin Thomas Pouncy (c. 1750-99). Pouncy's engraving, which he published in St Martin's Lane, London, was dedicated to Lord Dartrey, and a copy is included with this lot, as is a copy of Paul Sandby's View of Dawson & Grove from the site of the unfinished mausoleum, published in 'The Virtuosi's Museum' Further Reading: Anne Crookshank, 'A Life Devoted to Landscape Painting: William Ashford', Irish Arts Review Yearbook, vol. 11, 1995, pp. 119-30; Deirdre Conroy, 'Dawson Grove, Co. Monaghan', Painting Ireland (ed. William Laffan), Tralee, 2006, pp. 156-59; William Laffan and Brendan Rooney, Thomas Roberts, Tralee, 2009, pp. 91-109, 140-1; Finola O'Kane, William Ashford's Mount Merrion: The Absent View (Tralee 2012). Dr. Nicola Figgis, June 2013
WILLIAM ASHFORD 1746 - 1824 WOODED RIVER LANDSCAPE WITH PEASANTS, CATTLE, GOATS AND SHEEP BEFORE A RUINED CASTLE oil on canvas 60 by 76cm.; 23½ by 30in.
William Ashford, P.R.H.A (c.1746-1824) A wooded River landscape with a fisherman on a rock casting his line signed 'W. Ashford' (lower right) oil on canvas 29¼ x 36 in. (74.3 x 91.5 cm.)
William Ashford, P.R.H.A. (1746-1824) A Mill near Bantry, County Cork inscribed 'A Mill near Bantry' and numbered '2' (upper right) and futher inscribed 'A Mill near Bantry/Ashford' and 'Co Cork' (on the reverse) pencil, pen and brown ink, green and grey wash 9¼ x 14 3/8 in. (23.5 x 36.5 cm.)
William Ashford, Jun. (fl. 1810-1830) Kilrush House, Co. Clare, 1840 signed 'W Ashford' (lower left, overmounted) and inscribed indistinctly 'Kilrush House/Co-Clare/1840' (on the reverse of the backboard) pencil, pen and black ink and watercolour heightened with touches of gum arabic 8 1/8 x 10 5/8 in. (20.6 x 27.1 cm.)
William Ashford, 1746-1824, O/C, Rural Scene Signed LL. Left side has been restored in several places, right side has had a few touch ups. framed 42.5"W x 34"H.
William Ashford PRHA (1746-1824) et al Thomas Milton, A Collection of Select Views from the Different Seats of the Nobility and Gentry in the Kingdom of Ireland, 1783-93 Eight plates engraved by Milton after views by Ashford, Thomas Roberts and Francis Wheatley. Issued serially; this set consists of plates 6 (Belan-House, Co. Kildare), 8 (The Scalp, Co. Wicklow), 9 (Bessborough, Co. Kilkenny), 11 (Beau Parc, Co. Westmeath), 12 (The Salmon Leap, near Leixlip), 13 (Castle of Lismore, Co. Waterford), 16 (Glen Molour [sic], Co. Wicklow) and 19 (Ballyfin, Queen's Co. ). Each plate measures approximately 6.2 by 8 inches. Bound with the letterpress for plates 1, 2, 4 - 9, 11 - 17, 19 - 22 and 24, in marbled boards (lacking front board). Listed in Elmes and Hewson, no. 2069. Suitable for framing.
PROPERTY SOLD BY THE ORDER OF THE TRYON PALACE COMMISSION TO BENEFIT THE ACQUISITION FUND FOR TRYON PALACE HISTORIC SITES & GARDENS VIEW OF KILARNEY WITH THE PASSAGE TO THE UPPER LAKE measurements note 27 1/4 by 39 in.; 69 by 99 cm. signed and dated on a rock at lower right Ashford/1778 oil on canvas PROVENANCE Lady Wavertree; Her sale, London, Christie's, February 1, 1952, lot 14 (as by Ibbetson, titled On the Greta) to W. Sabin for 95 guineas; With Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., New York; From whom purchased by the present owners on September 17, 1957. EXHIBITED Possibly Society of Artists in Ireland, 1780, no. 9 (View in the Passage to the Upper Lake). LITERATURE E. Waterhouse, The Dictionary of British 18th Century Painters, Woodbridge 1981, reproduced p. 191 (as by J. C. Ibbetson and titled On the Greta); A. Crookshank, "A Life Devoted to Landscape Painting: William Ashford," in Irish Arts Review Yearbook, 1995, vol. 11, p. 125, no. 12 (as being signed and dated 1779); A. Crookshank and the Knight of Glin., Ireland's Painters: 1600- 1940, New Haven 2002, p. 152, reproduced fig. 189. NOTE This beautiful and rare view of the Killarney Lakes in Co. Kerry depicts a view towards the Upper Lake with the Old Weir Bridge. This region, one of the most famously scenic areas in Ireland, has long been a popular tourist destination. Here Ashford depicts an elegant group of 18th century tourists stepping out of a boat after a day of sightseeing. Ashford, who was to become one of Ireland's leading landscape painters, was born in Birmingham, England. He first arrived in Ireland at the age of eighteen when he took a position as clerk with the Ordnance Office in Dublin. He worked there for twenty years and traveled widely throughout the country. His earliest paintings, dating from 1767, are flower still lifes and it was not until 1772 that he exhibited his first landscapes. He became best known for his country house views of the seats of Irish landowners and developed an impressive roster of wealthy and well connected patrons. Rarer in his oeuvre are the more romantic views of the Irish landscape depicting mountain or lake scenery, such as the present painting. This painting once belonged to Lady Wavertree, née Sophie Sheridan (see Provenance below), a direct descendent of the playright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Her husband was Col. William Hall Walker, later Lord Wavertree, the well known owner, breeder and trainer of racehorses. He owned the Tully Stud in Kildare which he presented to the British Government in 1916 for the purpose of founding a British National Stud.
A wooded landscape, with figures and livestock on a path and ruins beyond signed and dated 'W.Ashford/1809' (lower centre) oil on canvas 21 x 29 1/2 in. (53.5 x 74.9 cm.)
View of Loch Lene, Lower Lake Killarney, with old Muckross House in the foreground oil on unlined canvas 21 x 29 in. (53.4 x 73.6 cm.) NOTES William Ashford was the leading landscape painter working in Ireland in the late 18th Century. He was born in Birmingham and moved to Ireland aged eighteen where he was to remain for some sixty years. When he arrived in Ireland Ashford appears to have been untrained as an artist. He started exhibiting at the Society of Artists in Dublin in 1767, but as a flower painter. In 1770 and 1771 he exhibited pictures of fruit and game, and it was not until 1772 that he was first heard of as a landscape painter, an art in which he had already become extremely competent by the late 1770s. He painted landscapes all over Ireland and Anne Crookshank records several other Killarney views by Ashford which are variously dated 1778 and 1779 (A. Crookshank, 'A Life devoted to Landscape Painting: William Ashford', Irish Arts Review Yearbook, vol. 11, 1995, p. 125, nos 9-12).
