A CHALK drawing by an Irish artist who died at a young age and therefore left behind only a small number of works comes up for sale early next month. Robert Healy's portrait of Anne, Countess of Clancarty is included in the fineart auction to be conducted by Hamilton Osborne King at the RDS, Dublin.
Relatively little is known about Healy, in part because his career was so brief. After training in the Dublin Society's schools, he established himself as an artist in premises on Wood Quay around 1765. He seems to have quickly achieved success thanks to his work in chalk and watercolour, exhibiting portraits in these media every year from 1766 to 1770; in the last of these years, he was awarded a prize by the Dublin Society for the best-exhibited drawing of a group of figures.
Healy's most famous work is the series of studies of the Conolly household which he made at Castletown House, Co Kildare, in February 1768, showing various members of the family and their friends hunting, walking, skating and shooting. These pictures reveal his tendency to elongate figures in an almost mannerist fashion, so that both people and animals tend to look lean and supple. Strickland thinks the work is excellent but coolly dismisses the artist's figures as being "somewhat stiff". However, he quotes Pasquin as saying of Healy's drawings that they "are proverbial for their exquisite softness; they look like fine proofs of the most capital mezzotint engravings". Certainly, this is true of the Castletown series, which remained with the house until the last decade. Healy was as renowned for his portraits of horses as humans; Crookshank and Glin refer to John O'Keefe's remarks that the artist's "chief forte was horses, which he delineated so admirably that he got plenty of employment from those who had favourite hunters, racers and ladies' palfreys."
Healy continued to be busy until the time of his death in July 1771; he fell fatally ill after sketching cattle in the park of the Earl of Mornington's home, Dangan Castle in Co Meath. The chalk portrait of the Countess of Clancarty being sold next month is representative of Healy's work, not least in its size; although full-length, it measures only 58 by 42 centimetres. The picture shows the countess standing before a lake in a romantic parkland; the tiered lace and embroidery on her dress is particularly well done.
The sitter was born a member of the Gardiner family of Dublin and her brother became the first Lord Mountjoy. Strickland quotes Pasquin as saying a Healy drawing of a fox and cock owned by Lord Mountjoy were "much admired by all connoisseurs". In 1762, Anne Gardiner married William Trench, first Earl of Clancarty and through the marriage of their daughter, Lady Elizabeth Trench, the picture eventually passed to the Irwin family of Mount Irwin, Co Armagh, the contents of which were sold early last month. Because of their relative rarity, prices achieved by examples of Healy's work tend to be high. In this instance, the estimate is £15,000£20,000.
The sale also contains a pair of mid-18th-century Irish pastel portraits, traditionally believed to represent members of the Galway Eyre family and suggested by the Knight of Glin to be from the hand of William Watson, who died in 1765. Their estimate is the same as for the Healy picture.
The Hamilton Osborne King auction at the RDS begins at midday on Monday, November 8th.
Robert Healy's chalk portrait of the Countess of Clancarty which is expected to fetch £15,000£20,000 at a Hamilton Osborne King auction on November 8th
