Early 17th Century Netherlandish School George Montgomery B...

Hammer

€23,000

Early 17th Century Netherlandish School

George Montgomery Bishop of Meath
oils on panel  1611, 45" x 34" (114cms x 87cms)

Inscribed t.r.  ‘Anno Dni  1611  Aetatis fua  45’

In this three quarter-length portrait from the Howth collection, George Montgomery [also Montgomerie] (c.1566-1621) is depicted standing, left hand resting on a red cushion, while in his right hand he holds a Bible. His clerical garb is fine but austere, with minimal decorative lacework on collar and cuffs. On his right thumb is a signet ring. At the top left of the canvas are the Montgomery family coat of arms, a blue shield surmounted by a casque and hand holding a fleur-de-lys. On the shield, a lance and sword crossed, three fleur-de-lys, with three golden rings at the bottom. The shield flanked by scarlet and grey foliate forms, surrounding a casque helmet and terminating in two golden tassels. At the top right of the canvas, an inscription ‘Anno. Dni  1611 / Aetatis Fua 45,’ indicates that the portrait was painted in 1611, when the sitter was forty-five years of age.

This would suggest a birth date of 1566 for George Montgomery, who was born at Braidstane in Ayrshire, Scotland, and who, along with his older brother Hugh, was deeply involved in the settlement of Ulster. The Montgomery family had close connections with King James VI, and soon after James’s accession to the English throne, George was appointed Dean of Norwich, and then Bishop of the diocese of Raphoe in Ireland. To the dismay of his wife, other Irish appointments followed, including Clogher, Derry and, in 1609, Meath. Montgomery was an able administrator, and while his efforts to secure the conversion of Roman Catholics in Ireland to the Protestant faith met with limited success, he is remembered for founding grammar schools and glebes, and for ensuring that ownership of escheated lands of churches and monasteries in Ulster were transferred to the Church of Ireland. Although for the most part an absentee prelate, after his death in London in 1620, in accordance with his wishes, Montgomery’s body was brought back to Ireland and he was interred in the graveyard at Ardbraccan, Co. Meath, where a large monument was erected in his memory. Whatever about the Howth portrait, Samuel Lewis in his 1837 Topographical Dictionary was clearly not impressed: “The tomb of George Montgomery, bishop of Meath and Clogher, stands on the north side of the slab; and strongly fixes attention by its minglement of pretension, barbarousness, and absurdity. Figures which it exhibits of the bishop, his wife, and his daughter, are the rudest productions of the chisel that can well be conceived.  Beneath the figures are the words, "Surges morieris, judicaberis" [roughly translated, the dead will rise and be judged]. The three figures on the tomb are said to be George, his wife Susan Steynings, and their only child, Jane, who was born about 1598 and in 1615 married in Nicholas St. Lawrence, 11th Baron Howth, with whom she had seven children. Montgomery described the St. Lawrences as “a noble house, the best of the Pale of Ireland.” They had reason to be grateful, as a considerable fortune passed to them through the marriage, Montgomery describing it as “a great burden for settling the estate of the house of Howth.” Susan Steynings died around 1614, and George married secondly Elizabeth Brabazon. He died on 5th January 1620. In the portrait at Howth, the stern expression of Montgomery echoes closely one of the few known portraits of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork. In these works, both dating from around 1610, the sitters are bearded and wear plain lace collars; their expressions are hard-head and sceptical, as befitted men who devoted their lives to the plantation of Ireland. Another portrait of George Montgomery hangs in Clogher Cathedral in Co. Tyrone;

Together with its Companion:

Portrait of Susan Steyning (1573-1614), wife of George Montgomery, 

Inscribed ‘Anno Dni  1611  AEtatis  Fecit  43’
 
Like the companion painting of her husband, George Montgomery, the identity of the artist who painted this portrait of Susan Steyning is not known, but it is broadly in the style of Daniel Mytens the Elder, Adam de Colone or Paul Van Somer, just three of the Netherlandish artists who flocked to London in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, taking advantage of a rising demand for portraits. Adam de Colone worked also in Edinburgh, and as George Montgomery was from Ayrshire, the artist who painted this portrait may have been a follower of de Colone.

In this three quarter-length image, Susan is depicted standing. In her right hand, she holds a Bible, while in her left she has an ornamental silver fan handle, designed to hold ostrich feathers. Such a luxury in early seventeenth-century Ireland would have would have attracted comment, but the portrait seems intended to downplay her fortune, and the fan holder is devoid of feathers. Susan’s dress is black and without ornament, the only hint of wealth conveyed by a few pearls securing her hair. Apart from three rings on her fingers, she wears no jewellery, and with ruff collar and plain lace cuffs, she presents the appearance of a devout wife of a Bishop. As in the portrait of her husband, she wears a signet ring on the thumb of the hand in which she holds a small Bible. The inscription on the painting is difficult to decipher, but  appears to date the portrait to 1611, and so it was painted just three years before her death.

The eldest daughter of Alice Fry and Phillip Steyning, of Holnicote in Somerset, in 1598 Susan married George Montgomery in Norwich. Montgomery was then appointed to bishoprics in Ireland and their daughter Jane was born in Co. Armagh, around 1598. Susan’s younger sister Margaret Steyning married John Willoughby of Payhembury in Devon, with whom the Montgomerys corresponded, and in the family archive, the “Trevelyan Papers”, there is a letter from Susan in which she mentions her husband’s going to Ireland, and her daughter’s concerns. After her death, George lost no time in arranging a marriage between Jane, now one of the wealthiest heiresses in early seventeenth-century Ireland, and the eighteen year-old  Nicholas St. Lawrence, 11th Baron Howth. The marriage brought Jane an aristocratic title, Baroness Howth, while she in turn brought much-needed cash into the old Anglo-Norman Howth family. Nicholas and Jane had seven children, of which one son and four daughters reached adulthood. Their son William became 12th Baron Howth. A Royalist rather than a Parliamentarian, Nicholas died in 1643, while Jane outlived him by many years, and died in 1678. George, Susan and Jane are all buried in the family tomb at Ardbraccan in Co. Meath, which was restored in the mid eighteenth century, around the same time as the rebuilding of Howth Castle.  (2)
Dr. Peter Murray 2021