WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART MONDAY 2 DECEMBER 2024 FROM 6PM

14 6 Richard Brydges Beechey ARHA (1808-1895) HOOKER OFF CORK HARBOUR, 1857 oil on canvas signed and dated lower right; signed, inscribed and dated [January 1858] on reverse 31 by 44.50in. (78.7 by 113cm) Frame Size: 42.5 by 56.5in. (108 by 143.5cm) Provenance: Sotheby’s, The Marine Sale, 1 April 1998, lot 152; with Gorry Gallery, Dublin; Private collection Exhibited: The British Institution, 1858, catalogue no. 215; ’An Exhibition of 18th, 19th and 20th Century Irish Paintings’, Gorry Gallery, Dublin, 3-12 December 1998, catalogue no. 10 A copy of the Gorry Gallery catalogue is included with this lot. This picture shows the view from the western shore of the entrance to Cork Harbour, looking east, across the deep-water channel to Roche’s Point lighthouse on the right of the picture and Carlisle Fort on the left. The hooker is heading into the wind in a short choppy sea, caused by the ‘tide-against-the-wind’ conditions and it is shallow water because the waves are stirring up the sandy bottom. Farther out, in the smoother dark green deep water, a much bigger vessel, two-masted and cross-rigged on both masts, is heeling over in the strong breeze and is probably reducing sail before turning to starboard and entering the inner harbour past Carlisle. It could be a Navy or Coastguard brig but the gun ports are not visible and it could also be a trading brig. Heavy rain has moved away to the north-east over east Cork. Shafts of watery sunlight highlight significant landmarks - the spires of two churches in Midleton, still newly built in 1857, just left of Carlisle Fort; and Roche’s Point lighthouse. The old signal tower on the hill on the extreme right is on Power Head, three miles east of Roche’s Point and was part of an ‘early- warning’ chain built in 1806. There are other minute but significant details. There are cattle grazing on the green slope below the lighthouse. The skipper is relaxed at the tiller. The crew includes two women - one, who is wearing the traditional Kinsale cloak also has a white clay pipe in her mouth. The hooker is similar to those in other pictures by Beechey, particularly Hookers in the Race off the Blaskets, running for Dingle (1873) which featured in the Gorry Gallery catalogue of June 1997. It is the traditional south coast of Ireland design - gaff rigged with a boom at the bottom of the mainsail and, unusually for Irish hookers, metal horse to carry the mainsheet over the tiller. Fishery laws, introduced in the 1840s required the registration of boats and the display of registration numbers on sails and at the bows and stern. These pictures do not show any numbers. Perhaps this was just how the laws of that time were regarded along the Irish coasts. The signature is printed R. BEECHEY on the cylindrical flotsam in the right foreground and the date 57 is on the end. The late Matt O’Donovan, for the Gorry Gallery, 1998. €20,000-€30,000 (£16,810-£25,210 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot6