Thomas Sautelle Roberts (1760-1826) "Cottage on a Riverbank...

Hammer

€1,150

Thomas Sautelle Roberts (1760-1826)

"Cottage on a Riverbank, probably on the Blackwater River," watercolour, 39 cms h x 54 cms W (15½” x 21¼”) (1)

Although better-known for his views of castles and great houses, the Waterford-born artist Thomas Sautelle Roberts also had an eye for picturesque humbler dwellings, as in this view of a cottage by a river, with mountains rising in the distance. The setting is likely in Wicklow, with the Sugarloaf mountain rising in the distance. Under the patronage of Lord Hardwicke, first Viceroy under the Act of Union, an exhibition of Roberts’s paintings was held in 1802 in the former parliament building at College Green, Dublin. The views were mainly of Wicklow landscapes and included Military Road, Gold Mines River, A View of Powerscourt and A View of the Valley of Glencree. Interest in the county had been spurred by the discovery of gold in the late eighteenth century, and by the building of the Military Road—intended, as the name implied, to facilitate the movement of troops and quell rebellion.  Although his Wicklow paintings formed part of a project of depicting scenes throughout Ireland, this remained unrealised. Roberts also painted views on the river Blackwater, a number of which were translated into aquatint prints, including Lismore Castle, a view showing the Tudor period building partly in ruins, before its rebuilding in the nineteenth century. Around 1795,  he produced an aquatint of Dromana House, also on the Blackwater, showing a sailing boat drifting down the placid waters, with just the upper storey and roof of the house visible above the trees flourishing on the steep bank of the river. His not dissimilar rendering of Blackrock Castle, on the River Lee in Cork, was also published as an aquatint. In 1816 a book containing prints of Dublin street views, after originals by Roberts, was published.

Born in Waterford city in 1760, Sautelle Roberts was the son of architect John Roberts and his wife Mary Susannah Sautelle. When his brother, the artist Thomas Roberts, died young in 1778,  Roberts added his name to his own. Originally apprenticed to the architect Thomas Ivory, in 1777 Roberts enrolled in the figure drawing and landscape schools of the Dublin Society. Moving between London and Dublin, he commenced exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1789, and eighteen years later was showing at the British Institution. From around 1799 he appears to have settled in Dublin where from 1800 onwards he exhibited with the Society of Artists of Ireland. Over the next decade, he showed over sixty works with the Society. In 1823 Roberts was a founder of the Royal Hibernian Academy, but died three years later at his home in Richmond St. Portobello.

Dr. Peter Murray, 2022