CAG.2381 Eighteenth-century wall appliqué with centre engraving, n.d., carved wood, gilt gesso, and coloured stipple engraving, 175 cm. Presented, John and Helena Mooney, 2008 (Cooper Penrose Collection).

WORK OF THE WEEK!

One of a pair that once adorned the walls of Woodhill, former home of the Penrose family, this decorative wall appliqué is sophisticated and elegant in equal measure.

Carved in wood and dressed in gilt gesso, this object consists of a ram’s head grotesque flanked by tassels at its top. Below these, a linked chain appears to suspend an oval frame surrounded by delicately carved leaves and flowers.

Miss Elizabeth Beauclerk as Una with the Lion, coloured stipple engraving

Held within the frame is a coloured stipple engraving after a portrait by the British artist, Joshua Reynolds. It depicts eleven-year-old Elizabeth Beauclerk (1766-1793) in the guise of Una from Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590), an epic poem partially written in County Cork. Elizabeth is shown kneeling within a wood and flanked by a donkey and a lion.

Reynolds was a friend of Elizabeth’s parents, Diana Spencer (1734-1808), an ancestor of Diana, Princess of Wales, and Topham Beauclerk (1739-1780), great-grandson of King Charles II. This print reverses the composition of the artist’s allegorical portrait from which it is derived, Miss Elizabeth Beauclerk as Una with the Lion (1777), which is in the collection of Harvard Art Museums.

Mrs Richard Brinsley Sheridan as Saint Cecilia, coloured stipple engraving web

The coloured stipple engraving held within its companion wall appliqué (CAG.2380) depicts noted soprano Elizabeth Ann Linley (1754-1792) in the guise of St Cecilia, patron saint of music.

Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) was a celebrated portrait artist, promoter of the ‘Grand Style’, and founding President of the Royal Academy of Arts. Despite – or perhaps because of – his position in the British art establishment, he was criticised by the likes of William Blake, James Barry, and Nathaniel Hone, with the latter satirising him in The Conjuror (1775) in National Gallery of Ireland’s collection.

Eighteenth-century wall appliqué with centre engraving is displayed in our Penrose Room.