Study of Lady Gore-Booth and her Daughters

Frederic William Burton , Irish, 1816-1900

Title

Datec.1844

MediumWatercolour and graphite on paper

Dimensions

7.5 x 10 cm

Credit LinePresented, The Burton Family, New Zealand, 2017

Object numberNGI.2017.26

DescriptionThe Irish artist Frederic William Burton was a successful watercolour painter and art administrator. Although feted as a portraitist in his own day, he is now best known for his large scale narrative watercolours including 'Blind Girl at the Holy Well' (1839), 'An Aran Fisherman's Drowned Child' (1841), and 'Hellelil and Hildebrand: The Meeting on the Turret Stairs' (1864). Many of these pictures were exhibited to great acclaim and engraved, which further increased their popularity. Burton gave up painting in 1874 when he was appointed Director of the National Gallery, London. Burton was knighted in 1884 and retired as Director in 1894.

This small sketch is one of at least two studies for a finished watercolour portrait of Lady Gore-Booth and her daughters. The other sketch, in the NGI collection, shows the figures in a slightly different pose, with four ladies seated in the background. In the first half of the 1840s Burton painted a series of family groups, the Gore-Booth picture being one of the more significant. Caroline Goold, Lady Gore-Booth, was the second wife of Robert Gore-Booth who built Lissadell House in Co. Sligo. The commission may have been prompted by the success of Burton’s earlier portrait of Henry Irwin, Robert Gore-Booth’s grandfather. This sketch, which is close compositionally to the finished watercolour, depicts Lady Gore-Booth reclining in a window seat book in hand, reading to her daughters. The finished painting was exhibited at the RHA in 1845 but it is likely Burton visited Lissadell the previous year to make preparatory sketches. In his diary for 1844 Burton notes that he lent his copy of Thomas Carlyle’s ‘Heroes’ to Lady Gore Booth and one can imagine them discussing Carlyle’s book during the sitting.
ProvenanceBy descent from the Artist; presented by the Burton Family, New Zealand, 2017.