This painting by Jonathan Fisher was painted in the mid-late eighteenth century. It is currently hanging in Fota House in Cork, and they have generously given permission for it to be reproduced here. Click on the interactive image to find out more about the painting – you may need to install Flash Player to view it. Edit: See additional material in comments below.
While on the topic of Fota House, it is really well worth a visit. Any visit includes a house tour and anyone who is a fan of Downton Abbey (who isn’t!) will be in for a treat, as they recreate what life was like for wealthy families in Irish “Big Houses”. The gardens are absolutely spectacular too. You can find out more about the house at their learning zone.
Scenery of Ireland by Jonathan Fisher is held by the National Library of Ireland (Joly collection). Of the sixty views Fisher painted, three are of the area around Enniskerry. #21 is a View from Kilmacanac Glen, Co. Wicklow; #30 is Tinneyhinch, showing a more substantial dwelling than that represented in his image above; and #54 is the eighteenth century landscape artist’s favourite; Powerscourt Waterfall.
The Irish Arts Review Yearbook, 1984, 1(4), 47-55, has an essay “The Landscape Paintings at Fota” by Richard Wood.
It contains a picture of Fisher’s painting, shown here, which is labelled “View of Powerscourt, Co. Wicklow”, which was held at Fota (previously prior to renovations). The passage regarding the the painting reads:
“The foundation of the Dublin Society’s School for Drawing and Design in the 1740s encouraged the radical change in the style of picture being produced in this country. Until then landscape painting had largely been concerned with map-like representations of great houses and their grounds… One such picture hangs in the Ante-Room to the Fota Drawing Room among the Flemish works, and forms part of the background material against which the more developed pictures can be viewed. It shows part of the Powerscourt Estate in Co. Wicklow, and its simple composition, high perspective and precise detail testify to its origins, the map-landscape. The elaborate frame and subject- matter both suggest that Lord Powerscourt was proud of the way he looked after his property and wished to draw the attention of his visitors to it; he was a good landowner and wanted that to be known.”
The same article also gives mention to James Arthur O’Connor (c. 1792 – 1841) and shows his “View of the Dargle”, saying that:
“Wildness, remoteness, loneliness, are combined with awesome grandeurs in James Arthur O’Connor’s mountainous landscapes, inspired by the dark glens of Co. Wicklow.”