CHARLES JERVAS (C. 1675-1739) Portrait of Thomas Carter (c....

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€60,000 - €80,000

CHARLES JERVAS (C. 1675-1739) Portrait of Thomas Carter (c. 1682-1763) and his wife Mary, née Claxton Oil on canvas, The portrait of Thomas is signed, dated, 1734, and inscribed ‘Dublin’ and ‘amicitiae ergo’ (‘for friendship’s sake’) and with extensive further inscriptions. Mary is housed in a frame made in about 1800 by Kearney’s, ‘Looking Glass Warehouse’, 49 Henry Street, Dublin, see label. Provenance: By direct descent within the family of the sitters Thomas Carter (the sitter) to his son; Henry Boyle Carter (b. c. 1722) at Castlemartin, County Kildare (High Sheriff of County Kildare in 1763) who married Susanna Shaen, to his son; Thomas Carter b. 1753 at Castlemartin, County Kildare, to his son; William Henry Carter (1783-1859), to his son; Thomas Shaen Carter (1813-1875) at Watlington Park, Oxfordshire; By descent within the Carter family to Duncan Maclachlan Carter-Campbell, 8th of Possil (b. 1911) to his daughter Mary Elizabeth Carter-Campbell (b. 1953) Exhibited (Thomas): The International Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures, Exhibition Palace, Dublin, 1865, lent by Thomas Shaen Carter (1813-1875) bears exhibition label; National Portrait Exhibition, London, 1867, lent by Thomas Shaen Carter (1813-1875) (no. 409), bears exhibition label Literature, Walter Strickland, A Dictionary of Irish Artists, 2 vols (Dublin and London, 1913) vol.1 p. 548; Peter Aronsson, Dictionary of Irish Biography, www.dib.ie, accessed 20 August 2024; Peter Aronsson, Oxford, Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com, accessed 20 August 2024 Melanie Hayes, The Best Address in Town, Henrietta Street, Dublin and its First Residents (Dublin, 2020) p. 50 and for 9 Henrietta Street pp. 50-59 Engraved, The portrait of Thomas was engraved in mezzotint by John Brooks (fl. 1730-1756). This print was reissued by Jefferys and Herbert (Strickland, Dictionary, Vol. 1, 110). Never previously offered on the open market, having been in the family of the sitters for a decade shy of three centuries, from 1734 until 2024, these portraits, by Charles Jervas, are iconic works of Georgian Ireland. Thomas Carter, was one of the most influential figures of eighteenth-century Dublin, a Member of Parliament, Master of the Rolls and architectural patron on a lavish scale. His wife, Mary, née Claxton, was the first cousin of Edward Lovett Pearce (1699-1733), the great architect of Dublin’s Parliament House and Bellamont Forest, County Cavan. The townhouse that Pearce designed for the couple, 9 Henrietta Street, has been described as ‘perhaps the most palatial residence’ on the famous street, itself ‘the best address’ in Dublin, with one of the most impressive stair halls in the city. ‘For more than three decades. This ambitious man held court there, establishing a prime position among parliamentary power brokers, social strategists and arbiters of taste’ (Melanie Hayes, The Best Address in Town, Henrietta Street, Dublin and its First Residents, 2020). Offaly-born, Charles Jervas meanwhile was the Principal Painter to the Monarch, a friend of Pope and Swift, and although London-based he painted this portrait in Dublin in 1734 as he proudly inscribes on the canvas next to his signature. Carter was born in Robertstown, County Meath, in the pivotal year 1690 and his life proceeded in parallel with the consolidation of the Williamite settlement of Ireland in all its complexity. His father, also Thomas, had performed ‘distinguished service’ for King William at the Boyne but the younger Thomas would adopt a stance as a Protestant patriot in the Dublin parliament which often set him in opposition to the Dublin Castle administration. Carter pursued an enormously successful and lucrative career at the Irish bar, before purchasing, for £11,000, the position of Master of the Rolls. In 1719 Carter married Mary Claxton, a daughter and heiress of Thomas Claxton and Lucy Pearce, making Mary, shown here, the first cousin of Edward Lovett Pearce. The year of his marriage Carter was elected for Trim, as a member of the parliament then sitting in Chichester House, Pearce’s great building on College Green would not be started for another decade. He later represented Hillsborough, County Down, between 1728-61. Other positions which Carter filled included Ranger of the Curragh, Governor of the Royal Hospital and Ranger of Dublin Castle while he was a leading figure in the passing of one of the early road acts. By 1745 Carter was characterised by Lord Chesterfield, the viceroy, as ‘the leading person in the [Irish] Parliament’ while the Earl of Shelburne described him as ‘a man of a very original character, whose uncommon sagacity and shrewdness as well as depth of understanding, would have distinguished and advanced him in any country’. Not everyone agreed and, it must be said that principled idealism was not an obvious path to success in the murky politics of mid-century Ireland. Carter was described by Horace Walpole as ‘an able and intriguing man’ with a ‘slender reputation for integrity’. (Walpole was also distinctly antipathetic towards Jervas who had been so much patronised by his father, the Prime Minister, Robert Walpole). More recently Melanie Hayes notes that Carter was ‘known for his tricky personality and propensity for making enemies’. Carter did however stand up for the rights of the Dublin parliament against Westminster when, in 1753, he ‘opposed the claim of the crown to dispose of unappropriated revenue in the Irish exchequer and engineered the defeat of this money bill’ (Oxford, DNB). For this he fell from royal favour and was dismissed from his position as Master of the Rolls in 1754. He was, however, compensated with the office of Principal Secretary of State, and Keeper of the Privy Seal, which brought an additional salary of £1,200 per annum. If Carter was too shrewd an operator to be excluded from power completely, he was ‘regarded by Dublin Castle as one who was most against English interests in Ireland’ (ibid). Carter’s great house at number 9 Henrietta Street is generally accepted as having been designed by Pearce and, while there is no documentary evidence to confirm this, his authorship is compellingly suggested by the sheer quality of the house and by Carter’s direct family connection’s to the architect. The house’s design clearly relates to No. 30 Old Burlington Street, London, designed, in 1721, by Lord Burlington (1694-1753) and Colen Campbell (1676- 1729), making a ‘tangible and tantalising’ connection between ‘the greatest figures in the Irish and English Palladian revival’ (Christine Casey, Dublin, 2005). Connections between the two houses can be traced via both patron and architect. Carter was politically very close to Henry (‘Speaker’) Boyle (1682-1764), later 1st Earl of Shannon (his neighbour at No. 11 Henrietta Street), who was a cousin of the ‘Architect-Earl’, while Burlington’s client at 30 Old Burlington Street was Algernon Coote (1689-1744), Earl of Mountrath, whose cousin, Thomas Coote of Cootehill (c. 1655 -1741), was Pearce’s uncle for whom he built Bellamont Forest, his Palladian masterpiece in County Cavan. For good measure, and illustrating how tightly-knit was this circle, Charles Jervas painted portraits of Algernon Coote and his wife Diana. Friends of Jervas and cousins of Pearce, the Carters, husband and wife, sat at the heart of a key nexus of architectural and artistic patronage at the crucial moment in the 1730s when the confidence of Georgian Ireland was at its height, as best expressed in the extraordinary – if arguably hubristic – palazzi that the new elite, political, legal and ecclesiastical, built for themselves on Henrietta Street. Carter was a founding member of the Dublin Society and was a keen agricultural improver, ‘He imported the best breeds of cattle and built several mills for grinding corn’ (ibid). In addition to the 4,000 acres he inherited near Trim – and extensive estates in County Roscommon – in 1729