samuel lover's achievement as a painter

Irish Arts Review

Samuel Lover's Achievement as a PainterAuthor(s): Paul E. M. CaffreySource: Irish Arts Review (1984-1987), Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring, 1986), pp. 51-54Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20491856 .

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW

SAMUEL LOVER'S ACHIEVEMENT AS A PAINTER

W ho today remembers the work of Samuel Lover (1797-1868), the

novelist and author of Handy Andy, the dramatist who wrote Rory O'More, the librettist who wrote and composed The Low Back'd Car, and the song-writer whose My Mother Dear brought a tear to so many a Victorian eye?

Yet Samuel Lover1 belonged to an important generation of nineteenth century Irish literary and artistic figures among whom Charles Lever (1806 1872), Dion Boucicault (c.1820-1890) and Lover himself predominate. All three, Irish by birth and education,

went to London and achieved success there, but never forgot their Irish back ground. They must have been regarded by the London public in much the same light as were Wilde, Synge and Shaw

decades later. Lover's achievement as a painter -

the focus of this article - has been almost forgotten. Recently, however, nineteenth century sentimental subject pictures and portraits have again become popular. Lover's paintings now achieve good prices, and are, relatively speaking, easy to acquire. It is therefore worth looking once again at his career as a painter of portraits in miniature, of literary subject pictures, and, to a lesser extent, of landscapes.

His most famous Irish contemporar ies were the landscape painters George Petrie, James Arthur O'Connor and Francis Danby, all of whom set out for London in 1813. But his work is best compared not with these, but with the Irish portraitists, Adam Buck, Alexander Pope and in particular, Edward Hayes. Hayes specialized in full-length portraits in pencil, crayons and water-colour

which became very popular in the early nineteenth century. Painters of this type of portrait were often miniaturists as well.

The very diversity of Lover's gifts as a writer, poet, librettist, novelist, theatri cal impresario and performer meant that he did not devote all his efforts to painting. Indeed, during his entire career, he only succeeded in making a reasonable living from painting from 1815 to about 1835.

At the outset of Lover's career, photography was in its infancy, and the painter did what the photographer was later to do. By the end of Lover's career, photographic techniques had

Although the career of Samuel Lover RHA has considerable

literary and historical interest no recent study of his work as a

painter has been published. His paintings have come on the Irish, English and American markets

recently. Here, Paul Caffrey who obtained his degree in the History of Art at Trinity College, Dublin,

writes about Lover the artist.

_- _ / 2,q

.,I

Portrait Bust of Samuel Lover. by Edward Arlington Foley, 1839.

National Portrait Gallery, London. No. 627.

advanced so much that the demand ceased almost completely for painted miniature portraits such as those in which he specialized2. His choice of this type of picture was unfortunate in another way; they were small in size and many of them have been lost. They were regarded by their owners as part icularly personal possessions, not gener ally for public exhibition.

Samuel Lover was born in Dublin, on 24th February 1797, the eldest son of Samuel and Abigail Lover. His father ran the British Exchange office in

Dublin and had various other commer cial interests.

At the age of twelve Lover was sent for a rest-cure to a farm in County

Wicklow. Shortly afterwards his mother died, and his song My Mother Dear reflects the deep grief which he felt. In 1810 he returned to his father's house, carrying with him such happy memories of his Wicklow sojourn that the country side with its customs and traditions recur again and again in his life's work.

Lover's father took him into his office and, in 1814, sent him to London, ostensibly to work in another business house. However, he appeared to thrive on the artistic atmosphere there although he is not recorded as having attended the Royal Academy schools. Presumably his devotion to his artistic vocation, instead of to his father's business, led to a family dis agreement on his return, for he left home shortly afterwards. As he then had to support himself by painting, copying music, and teaching drawing, life must have been extremely difficult.

It was not as a painter but as a song writer that Lover first became known. In 1818, before he was twenty-one, he

was asked to sing a composition on the occasion of the Thomas Moore banquet. The subject was Election of a Poet Laureate For Olympus, in which Venus and The Graces vote for their favourite,

Moore, who of course wins the award. Lover's connections were useful to

his career. Many of the commissions he received were from people connected

with the musical, literary and theatrical world. His artistic and social accomp lishments obtained for him an entree into the best Dublin society. His friend and patron, Lady Morgan (1778-1859), the art historian, was the 'dictatress' of literary and musical society, and she encouraged him to paint and write musical comedy. During this time Lover painted several portraits of her (see National Gallery of Ireland, and Royal Irish Academy collections).

His stories and "legends" appeared in the leading Dublin literary magazines of the 1820s and 1830s such as The Dublin Penny Journal, The Dublin Literary Gazette, The Irish Penny Magazine, and The Dublin University Magazine, and gained him a considerable literary reputation.

He became a member of the "Burschenschaft" Club, founded by Charles Lever, a lifelong friend, whose miniature portrait he painted on ivory in 1841.

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW

SAMUEL LOV-ER'S ACHIEVEMENT AS A PAINTER

Lover was also a member of the Dublin Glee Club, one of many societies devoted to conviviality and to the singing of glees and catches. The chairman was Sir John Stevenson (1760-1833), the composer respons ible for the arrangements of the music for many of the editions of Moore's Irish Melodies.

In 1817, 1819 and 1823 Lover's name appears as an exhibitor of drawings by the group of artists who exhibited in the Dublin Society's House in Hawkins Street, under the name of 'The Artists of Ireland', and again in the water colour exhibition in 1823.

His preoccupation with water-colour landscapes, a popular medium, was to continue throughout his professional career. Lover's work at this time was like Petrie's; at different times, both toured the countryside painting land scapes with antiquarian features. Many of Lover's were engraved and published in The Dublin Penny Journal, accom panied by descriptive and historical commentaries.

About 1820, Lover met John Comer ford (c.1776-1830), who had been a pupil of George Chinnery (1774 1852); as a result of Comerford's influence Lover turned to miniature painting.

In the early nineteenth century cos tume was dull; as a result the minia tures of the time are less attractive than those of preceding decades. The small

miniature portrait was often set in a lock et and was still part of dress, as had been the fashion in the closing decades of the eighteenth century.

Men's coats were mostly black, or dark blue, and very plain. The portrait painter had to get around the diffi culties of such sombre attire as best he could. This problem was solved by "fancy-dress" pictures, where the sitter was shown in colourful costume, usually theatrical, foreign or historical. Lover's

Portrait of a Gentleman in Theatrical Costume, (NGI) and his Portrait of a Lady Singing (NGI) are examples of this genre.

The miniatures of this period 'possess little originality of pose. Such charm as

many of them exhibit depends on the excellence of the technique or the attractiveness of the sitter's features.

After 1820, the rectangular miniature became more general and the size

Portrait of a Young Girl. Watercolour on Ivory, 8.5 x 7.5cm.

National Gallery of Ireland. No. 7665.

A,~~~~~,

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Portrait of a Lady Singing. Watercolour on Ivory. 1 I x 8.3cm.

National Gallery of Ireland. No. 7667

increased. Such miniatures were in fact "pictures in little", displaying access ories such as tables, flowers and, in the background, distant views. Lover's A Portrait of Lucia Elizabeth Matthews, (National Portrait Gallery, London), employs this type of composition and in fact reflects the feeling of contempor ary full-scale oil portraits.

Small full-length portraits, such. as Lover's Portrait of Master Henry Lover (Ulster Museum, Belfast), in pencil, crayon and water-colour, were very popular. The practitioners of this genre, and Lover is a good example, were mostly miniaturists.

Central preoccupations of Victorian painters were infancy, childhood and motherhood. They brought a refresh ingly secular atmosphere to the age-old tradition of mother-and-child portraits.

These pictures reveal a tenderness and depth of feeling which may surprise those who think of Victorian family life in terms of repression and discord - the

Dickensian attitude to childhood must be counterbalanced by reference to the sweeter world of George Eliot and Mrs. Gaskell.

Motherhood was regarded as the most important function of a woman, and to have a large family was a virtue accorded royal approval and subsequent middle-class emulation.

There are many examples of Lover's portraits of mothers and children. In the large-scale portrait, Mrs. Lover and her Daughter Meta (NGI), his wife is dressed in a sumptuous plumed hat, silk ruff and long gown trimmed with lace and velvet. She looks up at her infant daughter who holds a flower. The child is sedately seated on the edge of a pedestal, looking out self-possessedly at the viewer. The picture is framed by hollyhocks, symbolizing fecundity, and the single lily in an urn symbolizes purity. The background displays a sky similar to those which later became common in Victorian photographic portraiture.

Lover's interest in flower symbols appears in his portraits of married

women, where ivy is used to denote fidelity in marriage, and the rose, love.

Babies appear to have been almost objects of worship. Blake and Words worth's veneration of the innocence of childhood was re-created in Lover's Portrait of A Young Girl (NGI).

Lover began to exhibit in the Royal Hibernian Academy at its first exhibit ion in 1826. He was elected an associ ate in 1828, full academician in 1829, and was appointed trustee and secretary in 1831. Between that first exhibition and 1863 he exhibited approximately seventy portraits, mostly miniatures and drawings at the RHA.

During his years in Ireland, Lover's sitters included the Marquess of

Wellesley (the then Viceroy), the Duke of Leinster, Lord Cloncurry, Daniel O'Connell, (Drawing NGI) Thomas Moore (RIA), and his son, Russell Moore.

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW


In 1831 the famous violinist, Paganini (1782-1840), then at the height of his career, and a world celebrity, visited the

United Kingdom and came to Dublin. Lover was commissioned to paint his portrait, probably because of his contacts with the Dublin music world. The por trait was exhibited at the RA in 1832 and at the RHA in 1833 where con temporary records indicate that it created "a sensation", and was engraved. This led to requests from many other well-known sitters.

Lover was offered a commission to paint Princess Victoria, but this never materialized because family circumstan ces prevented him from travelling to England. Shortly afterwards, however, he moved permanently to London, and from then on his theatrical interests dominated.

Although Lover painted so many por traits during his career he never neglec ted landscape painting. Like Petrie, his early works were topographical exer cises, depicting scenes in counties Wick low and Galway; others include his views of Lough Corrib and Lough Attrey, sketched in the open air. I have been informed that he sketched in Lord Charlemont's estate at Marino.

Lover exhibited works showing peas ant and rural life, kelp burners and peas ant scenes. The sketches of An Irish Piper, (NGI) and A Rustic Head (NGI) demonstrate the rogue/peasant type, which he so enjoyed making the heroes of his novels.

His interest in literature both as a reader and writer were important to his career as a painter. He painted pictures derived from his impressions of works which he had read, such as his series of Designs from the works of Scott, Otway, Mrs. Radcliffe, and of course Shake speare. These survive in a private collection in Co. Cork. An important part of Lover's oeuvre is his illustra tions for his own novels.

At times he relied on Moore's Melodies for inspiration, as in Flow On Thou Shining River (NGI). This picture brings together Lover's interest in literary and musical subject matter, in landscape, and in 'the antique' in costume and theme.

Lover's Procession To The roiall iusts holden in Smithfield, London A.D. 1370, (private collection, Dublin) is based on an extract from Holinshed's Chronicles.

~: -

Mrs. Lover and her Daughter Meta. Oil on canvas, 92 x 71 cm.

National Gallery of Ireland. No. 4075.

_ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~1_9

"Flow on Thou Shining River". Watercolour on paper with white highlights. 45 x 60.5cm.

National Gallery of Ireland . 7656.

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW


This canvas displays in its centre a romantic maiden, seated side-saddle on a richly caparisoned white Arab steed

with flowing mane. Her pale pink flow ing medieval robes are as translucent as is compatible with Victorian ideas of decency. She holds a fan in her right hand, and a golden chain draped around the neck of an attendant knight who strides beside her. The canvas is suitably thronged with knights, peasants and soldiers.

During the period 1830-1832, Lover developed a new talent for humorous political caricature, a medium which had become very popular at the time, mainly due to the skill of John Doyle, the principal exponent of the genre. In 1830, the Parson's Horn Book was published. This satirized religion in Ireland and Lover contributed the illustrations and much of its literary content. The book, which sold at the then high price of five shillings, had a very large circulation, greatly increased by the notoriety which followed from a Crown prosecution.

Lover's own portrait was painted by his friend Daniel Maclise (1806-1870), whose career ran parallel with his own, and also by Petrie, for the Gallery of Celebrities in Frazer's Magazine. In 1836 an article in Blackwood's Magazine lauded his achievements, followed in 1842 by the publication of Handy Andy, Lover's most famous novel, which he wrote as a result of criticism of his other novels as being too flattering to the Irish character.

The following year, fifty-one engrav ings of Lover's landscapes of topograph ical and antiquarian Irish scenes, that had been first published in The Dublin Penny Joumal, were re-published in book form utider the title of Ireland Illustrated; it is from this work that much of our knowledge of Lover's landscapes comes.

He spent 1846-1848 in North America, touring with a theatrical com pany performing his Irish Evenings. He was the forerunner of a notable series of Irish actors who earned fame abroad

with one-man shows. While in America, he painted several landscapes and scenes of life there, for example A Street in New Orleans (British Museum).

On his return, he was faced with further problems; his sight failed and there were fewer commissions for por traits. Despite all this he renewed his interest in landscape painting. His last

Lucia Elizabeth Matthews. National Portrait Gallery, London.

W;~~~~W

--

Portrait of Master Henry Lover. WaterScolour on pencil on Paper.

21.3 x 1 5.7cm. Ulster Museum, Belfast. No.1 079

exhibited work, appears to have been The Kerry Post on St. Valentine's Day in f863.

Lover continued to paint, write and compose. He even returned to drama, writing The Sentinel of Alva, for the Haymarket Theatre, and McCarthy Mor for the Lyceum Theatre. He also com posed two libretti for Balfe. However, ill-health caught up with him. In 1865 he went to live in the Isle of Wight and ultimately moved to St. Helier, Jersey where he died on July 6th 1868 aged seventy-two. He is buried in Kensal

Green, London, but his memory is com memorated on a tablet by Goffin in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, with an inscription composed by his friend, the

Reverend E. H. Nelson. How should one estimate this neglect

ed artist? Did the diversity of his talents diminish his achievement as a painter? To some degree, the answer must be yes. But what should not be under estimated is his success as a miniaturist, and literary subject-painter. The vigour of his intellectual and artistic interest explains not only his success in diverse fields of achievement, but also his ability to take what in a lesser person

would be a hackneyed theme or a con ventional sitter; Lover's technical skill redeems them from the clutches of the commonplace.

It was not only Lover's own genera tion that recognized his ability; his successors appreciated his skill and craftsmanship, and must have rejoiced in the exuberance of his painterly imagination. His most celebrated influ ence as a painter was on Frederick

William Burton3, who started his career as a miniaturist under Lover's influence and later became one of the most distinguished Directors of the National Gallery, London. Both by reason of his many achievements and his influence, Samuel Lover should not be forgotten.

Paul E.M. Caffrey

NOTES

1. See generally: Bernard Bayle, Life of Samuel Lover, London, 1874.

AJ. Symington, Life Sketch of Samuel Lover,

London, 1880.

W.G. Strickland, A Dictionary of Irish Artists, 2 vols., Dublin and London, 1913.

2. Kieran Hickey, Faithful Departed, Dublin, 1982.

3. Anne Crookshank &. The Knight of Glin, Painters of Ireland, London, 1978, p.242.

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samuel lover's achievement as a painter

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