Portrait of Mary Eglantyne Horsley

Wellington Colomb , Irish, 1827-1895

Title

Date19th century

MediumWatercolour on paper

Dimensions

38.2 x 24.3 cm

Signedon verso: Wellington Colomb

Credit LinePresented, 2018

Object numberNGI.2018.2

DescriptionThe sitter Mary E Horsley, may have been a daughter of Heneage Horsley, Dean of Brechin in Scotland from 1812 until his death in 1847. The watercolour was once owned by Percival Arland Ussher (1899-1980), an Anglo-Irish academic, essayist and translator. Ussher was born in Battersea, London, the only child of Emily Jebb and Irishman Beverley Grant Ussher. The Jebbs were a wealthy and influential family of reformers. Arland Ussher was stepfather to the person who gifted the drawing. The drawing has been gifted to the National Gallery of Ireland due to the Irish connections of both the artist and the drawing’s previous owner. There are two unpublished works about the Horsley family at the Society of Genealogists Library in London.

The artist, Wellington Colomb (1827-1895) appears in Walter Strickland’s 'A Dictionary of Irish Artists' (1913), where he is noted as an amateur artist. The second son of General George T. Colomb, from 1848 to 1851 he contributed landscapes to the exhibitions in the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) while residing with his family at the Hibernian Military School in the Phoenix Park. Strickland writes: "On the 10th September, 1851, at the age of 24, he joined the Royal Irish Constabulary as a Cadet, and while stationed at Killarney as a Sub-Inspector he exhibited landscapes in the Hibernian Academy in 1858, 1859 and 1862. He was promoted County Inspector on 15th October, 1875, and was appointed Assistant Inspector-General on 16th October, 1877." Colomb also sent landscapes in watercolour to the RHA in the years 1866, 1867 and 1879. He retired on pension on 10th September, 1891, and died on 7th May, 1895.

Inscriptionon verso (in graphite): Eglantyne Mary Horsley (daughter of Very Rev Dean Horsley) by Wellington Colomb