Irish Arts Review

Paintings and Sculptures in Trinity College Dublin by Anne Crookshank; David WebbReview by: Nicholas RobinsonIrish Arts Review Yearbook, (1991/1992), pp. 262-263Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20492702 .

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW

BOOK REVIEWS

PAINTINGS AND SCULPTURES IN TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN

ANNE CROOKSHANK AND DAVID WEBB Dublin, Trinity College Dublin Press, IRE19.95

This volume is Number 4 in the Trinity College, Dublin, Quatercentenary Ser ies. It was launched in Trinity College in

October 1990 with the following speech by Nicholas Robinson:

Provost, Professor Crookshank, Pro fessor Webb, Ladies and Gentlemen.

How does it feel to address a distinguish ed audience, however briefly, on the scholarly collaboration of two of the Col lege's most formidable personalities?

Well, the situation isn't quite analogous, but I enjoyed hearing of David Webb's opening remarks to a conference, on reproductive biology, in Birmingham, in 1965:

'I cannot imagine' he said, 'what prompted the organisers.... to ask me to deliver an address on this subject; still less can I understand what mad impulse made me accept their invitation. It is a subject on which I have done no experiments or systematic observations, and my reading has been of a most desultory and unsystematic character....'

The publication we celebrate this even ing is a brilliant tour de force in which

Anne Crookshank's formidable resear ches on the pictures and sculptures in the College's collection and their artists are accompanied by David Webb's perceptive and witty biographies of the sitters.

More of both anon, but, at the outset, we must note their grateful acknowledge ments to Marcella Senior and to photo grapher Brendan Dempsey, both of whom made contributions without which, say the authors, the book could not have been

written. As I have indicated, the descriptions of

the works and the notes on the artists were written by Anne Crookshank. Most people here know that Anne is a descen dant of a remarkable academic and scholarly dynasty, which has been associ ated with Trinity for two and a half cen turies, and that the walls of the upper Lunch Room were liberally hung with eighteenth and nineteenth century Col lege portraits of her family. An Apollo profile penned by her col

league Edward McParland in 1987 des cribes her collaboration on another book, with the Knight of Glin.

'If their morning co-authorship has reached the pitch of tempestuous violence not infrequently attained,

writes McParland,

'those who have seen the missiles reached for, and those who have heard the doors slammed in grand affectations of outraged leave-takings will marvel at the merry lunch-time scene'.

Of that collaboration, McParland goes on:

'Not since Walter Strickland's Dictionary of Irish Artists of 1913 had there been a comparably pioneering or comprehensive work in the study of Irish paintings and their documentation'.

And one final observation I particularly enjoyed; speaking of her battling spirit on behalf of the Castletown Foundation and a host of other oroiects dear to her heart.

he says: 'And she is reckless in her ap proach to figures of authority. It is the despair of the naturally sycophantic to observe how frequently this recklessness pays off'.

The importance of her work in this pre sent catalogue must be emphasised, in particular regarding the paintings be queathed to the College by Madden in the 1760s. Her attributions, such as Saint John in the Wilderness to the School of Veronese, and A Philospher to the Circle of Mola, reflect a lifetime of expertise and judgment, which the ordinary reader will happily rely upon, but which will be par ticularly appreciated by scholars.

David Webb's biographies of the sitters will give great pleasure to all who come across this catalogue. His most renowned published work is on the Flora Europea but more relevant to the book we celebrate to day is his collaboration with Dr R B

McDowell, in writing the Academic History of Trinity. In his foreword to that book, FSL Lyons wrote that Webb had 'the most incisive mind of his generation in College'. 'He also,' wrote Lyons, 'de voted himself to protecting and enlarging the amenities of the College, especially those of the Common Room, and few aspects of our communal living have not benefitted from his deep attachment to the place'.

Lyons, speaking of Webb and McDow ell, says: 'Both have displayed throughout their careers that easy versatility which they themselves have identified as the hallmark of the older Trinity tradition'.

If Webb's main collaborator as joint

author before this was McDowell, does this establish a spiritual affinity between

McDowell and the Crook? Or, looking at it the other way, between Webb and the

Knight? David Webb (anonymously) published

in TCD Miscellany in 1943 an article en titled 'The Age of the Board'; in this he quotes Sir William Osler 'On the use lessness of men over sixty years of age, and the incalculable benefit it would be... if, as a matter of course, men stopped work at this age'. In fact, Dr Webb's record in publishing is as distinguished perhaps more so, since his retirement.

You must search out your own favourite extracts from his biographical notes of the sitters:

On Provost Alton: 'It was the search for knowledge rather than its disclosure that fascinated him, and he published little'.

On Arthur Browne: 'He was widely respected as a man of integrity and hones ty, though without the severity that too often accompanies these virtues'.

On John Anster, appointed in 1850 as Regius Professor of Laws: 'the first holder for many years to have any qualification for the post'.

On George Ferdinand Shaw: 'though he contributed little to the scholarship of Dublin, he contributed much to its enter tainment'. On John Henry Kellett, mathematician

and Provost: 'He was a man of fine presence and imposing utterance; it was said of him that if he told you that all was not gold that glitters, you felt momentari ly that you were the privileged recipient

of a new revelation'. These College portraits constitute a

fascinating 'hall of fame' extending for almost 400 years. It is surprising that there are not more of them, and it is en couraging that in the last ten years pro bably more pictures have been commis sioned - and good pictures, such as Festing's portrait of Professor Webb and Gowing's of Professor Crookshank - than at any other period.

But it is a ticklish problem that not everyone who has served scholarship or the College well - or indeed both - can be invited to sit. 'Provosts', we are told in the introduction, 'are the only persons

who are certain, since the eighteenth century, of being painted, though not necessarily at the College's expense'.

Photography, as an art form, is seriously undervalued in this country. Could we

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW

BOOK REVIEWS

make a start by assembling a systematic photographic collection of portraits of those whose achievements should be acknowledged, without prejudice to the accolade of sitting for a painting or sculpture? And, as I look around me, I feel that the art of the cartoonist would not go amiss.

Meanwhile, as we go through this cat alogue, each of us will think of his own heroes, no longer alive, whose omission we regret, and other candidates, very much alive, whom we would wish to see in the next edition of Crookshank and Webb. I regret, for example, the omission of

Theodore Moody. There was a momen tary bafflement at George Dawson's omis sion, but there he is, at least 'Towards an Image of George Dawson', in the Modern

Art Collection catalogued by David Scott. But one quickly realises what a

minefield this listing could become, so I shall leave it to you to draw up your own.

To whet your appetite for what is there, however I would mention that the careers of sitters include:

Three suicides (Butcher, McCullagh and Wolfe Tone); two executed (Charles I and Robert Emmet); one imprisoned for debt (Isaac Butt); one impeached (the 2nd Duke of Ormonde, Chancellor of the University) and one (Bishop Clayton) sav ed from trial for heresy by what Professor

Webb describes as his 'timely death'. Finally, of 249 sitters, fourteen are

women, not counting Oliver Sheppard's Sleeping Nymph, but including Anne Crookshank, Jocelyn Otway-Ruthven and Queen Elizabeth I.

Maybe a new era is dawning when mna na Trion6ide will come into their own.

Nicholas Robinson

Nicholas Robinson, a collector of Irish caricature, is chairman of the Irish Architectural Archive and a director of the Irish Centre for European Law, TCD.

VIEWS OF ROME FROM THE THOMAS ASHBY COLLECTION

IN THE VATICAN LIBRARY

RAYMOND KEAVENEY Scala Books, 1989. IR?,34.50 (hardback)

?15.00 (paperback).

Published in association with the Vatican Library and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, Views of Rome is an impressively lavish

volume intended to serve both as an ex hibition catalogue and as a more permanent celebration of the city of Rome and its neighbourhood. Views of Rome was shown at the National Gallery of Ireland, 10 April -2 June 1991. Visitors to this, as to other recent exhibitions,

may well feel dismayed by the weight and cost of the catalogue, inevitably partial aesthetically and topographically as a survey of the subject, but in its secondary purpose the volume is more successful. It honours the memory of Thomas Ashby (1874-1931), one time Director of the

British School in Rome and the author of definitive books on The Campagna in Classical Times (1927) and Roman Aque ducts (1935), and not forgetting pioneer ing studies of post-classical topics, like an article on the work of the eighteenth century Roman architect, Alessandro Specchi (1927). Following his sudden death, after falling from a train, his widow sold to the Vatican Library his collection of about 1000 drawings, of which a catalogue of 447 items by Didier Bodart was published in 1975.

The exhibition, selected and catalogu ed by Raymond Keaveney, Director of the

National Gallery of Ireland, covers a group of eighty-one drawings from the collection, ranging in date from the six teenth to the nineteenth centuries and by artists of almost all European schools. It is preceded by essays by Leonard E Boyle O P, Prefetto of the Vatican Library, on Ashby and his collection; by Donald R McClelland, Exhibition Coordinator and Curator of the Smithsonian Institu tion, and by Marc Worsdale, on the city of

Rome, its mingling of ancient and mod ern, sacred and profane, and the attract ions that this holds for its many visitors.

Lacking as a framework of the book is a brief survey of the main artists who depicted the city, from northern pioneers in the sixteenth century to the great figures of the eighteenth, Panini, Cana letto and Piranesi, and there is no out line of the history of its archaeological exploration.

The drawings are arranged not by date or school but according to a topograph ical programme that begins with St

Peter's and its construction and moves to

buildings in its neighbourhood, to the Tiber, the Forum and finally to sites in the Campagna. The main artists represented include Etienne Duperac (A View of Rome from the Palazzo della Cancelleria), Israel

Silvestre, and Claude Lorrain (The Ponte Salario), Jacob van der Ulft and Jan de Bisschop, representing seventeenth cen tury Dutch interest in the city, and in the eighteenth century, Richard Wilson,

William Marlow and Jakob Philipp Hackert. A surprisingly long list of French eighteenth-century artists and a few Italians help to maintain the general level of quality, Blanchet, Vincent,

Armand, Chaix, Grandjean, and Paolo Anesi, but many of the drawings, some unattributable, are of largely antiquarian interest. Amongst work by these lesser artists the careful pen drawings of Ferdi nand Becker of Bath (died 1825), of which eight are included, strengthen the topographical skeleton of the catalogue, together with three sketches, here ident ified as being by Elizabeth Susan Percy,

whose uncle, an illegitimate son of the Duke of Northumberland, was the found er of the Smithsonian Institute.

The author's fluent and carefully researched commentaries on the draw ings accumulate into an impressive and evocative history of the city. The majority are preceded by well chosen quotations about the site represented from the best known writers on Rome, from Livy and Suetonius to Evelyn, Gibbon and Henry James, and include recent specialists, like Lanciani and Ashby himself. These are followed by essays on the history of each site and thorough commentaries, where needed, on the authorship of the draw ings, some of which are given attributions

more convincing than those made by Bodart. In certain cases, notably Anesi's View along the Tiber (no. 11), new sugges tions are even convincingly made about the identification of the site. The range of drawings in the Ashby collection may seem too limited to justify such special treatment, but the book itself is some thing of a triumph as a work of scholar ship that also provides an attractive and accessible introduction to Rome and to some of the principal artists and writers

whose work it has inspired.

Allan Braham

Dr Allan Braham is the Keeper of the National

Gallery, London.

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