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Alexander Williams RHA (1846-1930)
OLD CANON STREET, ST PATRICK’S CLOSE, DUBLIN
watercolour over pencil
signed lower right; titled lower left
10 x 13in. (25.40 x 33.02cm)
Provenance:
de Veres, 23 February 2004, ex lot 41;Private collection
Literature:
Ledbetter, Gordon T., Privilege & Poverty - The Life & Times of Irish Painter & Naturalist, Alexander Williams RHA 1846-
1930, The Collins Press, Cork, 2010, p.91 (illustrated)
Alexander Williams RHA (1846-1930) is primarily remembered as a marine and landscape painter, and most especially for
opening up Achill Island to a wider public at a time coincident with the extension of the railway fromWestport to Achill
Sound. But his copious sketchbooks, leather bound and inscribed in gold, indicate, as he travelled all over Ireland and
across the water, he had more than a passing interest in recording buildings and streetscapes that took his fancy, usually
old and quaint, and these found their way into his exhibitions.
While Williams was born in the Square, Monaghan on 21 April, 1846, his formative years were spent in Drogheda until,
when he was fifteen, the family moved to Dublin. His professional career as an artist may be said to have started in 1870
when he first exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy. He continued to do so for sixty-one consecutive years, a record
that remains unequalled.
The annual solo exhibitions he held from 1884 in Dublin, usually at the Leinster Hall in Molesworth Street, from 1884
became eagerly awaited social events, attended by a thousand and more and usually patronised by the Lord Lieutenant
or his wife, and the Castle set”. Unless issued with an invitation or you were a member of the likes of the Dublin
Sketching Club, (of which Williams was a founder member and secretary for fifty years), you were expected to pay to
gain entry! His catalogues were innovative in that they were often illustrated. Musical concerts by local worthies took
place on Friday afternoons when afternoon teas were hosted by the artist’s chic wife.
In 1892 Williams devoted a special section of his exhibition at the Leinster Hall to ‘Bits of Old Dublin.’ It drew praise from
all quarters. ‘Most of these latter drawings,’ noted the Irish Society, ‘were sketched by the artist at four for five o’clock a.m.
on summer mornings, when immunity from street traffic and idle watchers could be securely counted upon.’The Daily
Express presciently recognised the significance of what he was doing: ‘”Bits of Old Dublin” are highly interesting little
pictures, and as some of them relate to such localities as Hanover Lane, Nicolas Street, and Old Wood Street - unsavoury
relics of bygone times, which have recently been effaced by the Public Health Department - they may serve a useful
historic purpose hereafter.’ Indeed the street scenes in this catalogue have all changed beyond recognition since
Williams’ day. The artist captured not only the quaintness of those old buildings, but their intimacy and scale, the small
dwellings and artisans’ shops, higgledy piggledy and cheek by jowl, evoking an age remote from our own. Williams
caught the passing of the old city, often just in time. As the Irish Times recorded: ‘This is a bit of Dublin now passed away,
for old Canon Street, with its quaint curio shops, was part of the site taken in by St Patrick’s Park. Mr Williams took this
sketch on the very last day of the existence of Old Canon Street in the form here pictured.’The exception among these
six water colours is St Audeon’s Gate one of the few bits of Medieval Dublin to survive. It was to the work of Alexander
Williams that Dublin Corporation turned for historic reference during restoration of this famous landmark some years
ago. Gordon T. Ledbetter April 2015
Gordon Ledbetter is the author of Privilege & Poverty - The Life & Times of Irish Painter & Naturalist, Alexander Williams
RHA 1846-1930, The Collins Press, Cork, 2010
€ 2,000.00- € 3,000.00 (£1,490-£2,240 approx.)
Large Image & Place Bid Lot 32IMPORTANT IRISH ART ·
25 MAY 2015 AT 6PM