Thomas Sautelle Roberts, Irish, 1760-1826
Title: The Countryside near Bray, County Wicklow, Looking towards Killiney Bay
Date: 1793
Medium: Ink, graphite and watercolour on paper
Dimensions:
25.7 x 37.5 cm
Signed: lower right: T S. -Roberts 93
(Irish Watercolours and Drawings in The National Gallery of Ireland, Adrian Le Harivel, ed., 1991)
Credit Line: Purchased, 1982
Object Number: NGI.18991
DescriptionThomas Sautelle Roberts was apprenticed to the Dublin architect Thomas Ivory but later abandoned architecture for painting. He studied at the Dublin Society's Schools, and began his career as a landscape artist painting views around Dublin and Wicklow. His brother Thomas Roberts (1748-1778) was a talented painter in oils. Twelve aquatints of Irish scenery were published after his watercolours between 1795 and 1799. A master of the small scale watercolour, he was adept at painting trees and conveying the spaciousness of a view. His use of soft colours and typical foreground figures place him firmly in the eighteenth century tradition of picturesque landscape painting.