Although not specifically the subject of any one lecture at today's symposium on Lord Charlemont and his circle, the importance of the 18th-century Grand Tour will no doubt be mentioned by many speakers. There can be no doubt that the Earl's aesthetic judgement owed a great deal to all he had seen and learnt during the years spent wandering through Europe and the near east from 1746 to 1754.
Like many other such travellers of the period, he used this time not just to observe but also to amass treasures which could be brought back to decorate his homes.
Coincidentally, Sheppard's of Durrow, Co Laois, is holding an auction next week in which a number of lots could very well have been acquired by their original Irish owners while on a Grand Tour.
Of particular importance in this respect are a pair of early 17th-century Italian marble figures, which are said to have been part of the contents of Castle Durrow before these were sold in 1922. Although much altered, the house is early 18th century in origin and was built by Colonel William Flower, whose descendants, the Viscounts Ashbrook continued to live there until this century.
The two Italian figures, each standing over five feet high, represent Adam and Eve, and they are expected to fetch £30,000-£40,000. Statuary was often brought back to Ireland by Grand Tourists; Joseph Leeson, the first Earl of Milltown, lost a large collection of statues and pictures he had bought in Italy in the mid-1740s to adorn his new home Russborough, Co Wicklow, when the ship on which they were being conveyed was captured by the French. He was back in Rome again in 1751, accompanied by his son, Joseph junior and his nephew Joseph Henry, whose own house, Lodge Park, Straffan, Co Kildare, was also filled with items brought back from his travels in Europe. It was during this trip that Henry commissioned from Joshua Reynolds the Parody on the School of Athens, which is now in the National Gallery of Ireland and which features not just its original owner and his two relatives but also Lord Charlemont, another of the Irishmen in Rome at the time.
Cynthia O'Connor writes in her newly-published biography of the earl (The Pleasing House: The Grand Tour of James Caulfield, First Earl of Charlemont) that while the English had a long tradition of visiting cities such as Rome, "the Irish, on the other hand, came almost as pioneers and from a climate of newly-acquired prosperity . . . and were in Rome to gather up, perhaps rather too obviously, the trappings of their new-found wealth and power". Other lots in the Sheppard's sale are also representative of this flourishing moment in Irish history, although they are not necessarily of overseas origin. There is, for example, an early 18th-century oyster veneered chest of two-short and three-long drawers, furnished with armorial brass handles. Estimated to make £8,000-£12,000, this is precisely the kind of furniture which would have been purchased for newly-erected homes such as Castle Durrow. So too would the rather unusual walnut and cross-banded chest on chest of two-short and six-long drawers, footed with an inset scallop shell, being offered by Sheppard's and expected to fetch £3,000-£5,000. As Irish furniture makers began to grow more confident and acquire local clientele, they produced items such as the 18th-century mahogany table, which, unusually for this country, does not have claw-and-ball feet, even at the front (£4,000-£6,000). From a slightly later period, when rococo decoration arrived in Ireland, comes a small gilt-frame pier glass in the Chinese Chippendale style (£2,000-£3,000).
Sheppard's antique and fine art auction of almost 500 lots takes place next Wednesday at 2 p.m. on the company's premises.
