WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART 27th September 2021 at 6pm

146 119 Thomas Roberts (1749-1778) HORSES AND DONKEYS INWOODED LANDSCAPE oil on canvas 21.50 by 35.50in. (54.6 by 90.2cm) Frame Dimensions: 28 by 42in. (71.1 by 106.7cm) Drying cracks visible on close inspection. Otherwise very good condition. Provenance: Adam’s, 8 October 1987, lot 48; Cynthia O’Connor, Dublin; Private collection An almost identical painting by Roberts is in the National Gallery of Ireland. See their Illustrated Summary Catalogue of Paintings published by NGI, no. 935. A small group of works by Thomas Roberts, including the present painting, demonstrate his knowledge of the art of George Stubbs. However, as William Laffan and Brendan Rooney note in their work on the artist, works such as A Bay Horse and Two Donkeys, ‘demonstrate that while Roberts was aware of contemporary development in horse painting, not least Stubbs’s advances, he did not want to produce mere pastiches of successful London models. While sharing Stubbs’s interest in minutiae - if not the English artist’s preoccupation with anatomical exactitude - Roberts incorporated this into a distinctive style that allowed him to work to his particular strengths’. Here, the background with its meticulously observed foliage ‘is resolutely a Roberts landscape’. €30,000-€50,000 (£25,640-£42,740 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot119