William Mulready
, Irish, 1786-1863
Title
The SonnetDatec.1839
MediumGraphite, red and brown chalk with white highlights on paper
Dimensions
36 x 29.9 cm
Signedlower left: W M [...]
(Irish Watercolours and Drawings in The National Gallery of Ireland, Adrian Le Harivel, ed., 1991)
Credit LinePurchased, 1933
Object numberNGI.2950
DescriptionThis is a cartoon or finished study for Mulready's popular painting, now in the Victoria and Albert Muuseum, London, painted in 1839 for his most important patron, the well known English collector John Sheepshanks. The drawing differs only slightly from the finished painting; the small clump of trees to the upper left of the composition does not appear in the final work.
Mulready, an Irish born artist, was renowned for his genre scenes tinged with romantic sentiment. He began his career as a landscape painter and his facility in describing the natural world is clearly visible in the rural setting. Using chalks and pencil, the artist achieves a real sense of a moment caught in time as the young suitor waits nervously for his beloved's reaction to his poem.
ProvenanceChristie's, London, 14 July 1933, T. Horrocks Millar, Esq. Sale Exhibition HistoryRoyal Academy of Arts, London, 1845
Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1848
Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1864
Irish Watercolours 1675-1925, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, 1976
Master European Drawings From the Collection of the National Gallery of Ireland, Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Colorado Springs Fine Arts Centre, Colorado; Art Gallery, University of Maryland, College Park; Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin; Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; The Minneapolis Museum of Art, Minnesota; The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California; National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 1983
Irish Watercolours and Drawings, McMullen Museum of Art Boston College, Boston, 4 October 1993 – 5 December 1993
Lines of Vision. Irish Writers at the National Gallery of Ireland, 8 October 2014 —12 April 2015