GARRETT MORPHY (c.1650-1716) A portrait of Anne Boyle 2nd Lady Mountjoy Three-quarter length seated, attended by a cupid and a dove and wearing sumptuous lace and satin dress, beside a brocaded curtain, an Italian Renaissance building and formal garden in the background. Oil on canvas, oval, 102 x 124cm Provenance: Hamwood House, Dunboyne, Co. Meath Literature: Ireland's Painter's, Crookshank & Glin, Yale 2002, pg17. In 1696 Morphy painted Lady Mountjoy in an oval landscape, holding a dove and accompanied by Cupid to symbolise her recent marriage. The pose and accessories were taken directly from a portrait by the French artist, Henri Gascars (1635-1701) Lady Mountjoy's portrait is also notable for the cascades of frothy lace and this flecked quality is almost an autograph of Morphy's later style... This fine portrait is one of the Garret Morphey’s most accomplished and decorative works. It has been identified as Lady Anne Boyle with a date 1692. The portrait displays several distinctive features found in Morphey’s English portraits, such as the jewelled clasps on the shoulders and the gauzy texture of the sleeves and lace. The pose and landscaped background, including the child-like figure are taken directly from an engraving of a portrait of the Duchess of Portsmouth, painted by the French artist Henri Gascar, and engraved by Etienne Baudet c.1673. While the pose of the sitter’s right hand may look awkward it is derived from the Baudet engraving and is also noticeable in the original Gascar portrait. Morphey also painted similarly elegant portrait of Lady Fortesque, also in the style of Gascar with the pose taken directly from an engraving of work by that artist. Sitter: Identified on the frame label as Lady Anne Boyle (1674 -1741), daughter of Murrough Boyle and Anne Coote, she married William Stewart, 2nd Viscount Mountjoy in St Michans Church in Dublin in 1696. Anne was the mother of William Stewart, 1st earl of Blessington. It is difficult to date this painting. A suggested date for this portrait of not later than the 1680s is based on various costume details and general style of the painting and would rule out the current identification. (However the Stewart connection would appear to be the reason it came to into the Tighe family, and so to the Hamiltons of Hamwood where it has been from at least the early 19th Century) Artist: Garret Morphey (c.1650-1715/16), celebrated as the first ‘Irish’ painter of note, he was in fact born in Yorkshire to an Irish father, Edmund Morphie (sic) and his wife Bridget, nee Revel (d.1684), of Nethergate Hall, near Sheffield.* Morphey’s father and brother were listed tenants on the dukes of Norkfolk, Yorkshire estates during the 1660s and ‘70s and these Howard connections may hold the key to the identity of the sitter. Morphey’s artistic training took place in London where he was recorded as working for Edmund Ashfield, who, in turn had worked with one of the outstanding artists of that period, John Michael Wright. All three artists were part of a circle that surrounded Charles II’s Roman Catholic queen, Catherine of Braganza. These London connections may have brought him within the ambit of Oliver Plunkett during the Bishop’s imprisonment there and whose portrait by Morphey was engraved and widely distributed. Many fine portraits of Yorkshire and Lancashire Catholic gentry were painted by Morphey before his arrival in Dublin. The first documented evidence of his work in Ireland is a portrait of Lady Shelburne dated 1694. *The information concerning Morphey’s origins in Yorkshire supersedes most accounts written to date, including any of my earlier publications on this artist written pre-2012. Jane Fenlon, September 2021 Sources J. Hunter, Familiae minorum gentium, ed. J. W. Clay, 4 vols., Harleian Society, 37–40 (1894–6), vol. 1 W. G. Strickland, A dictionary of Irish artists, 2 vols. (1913) J. Fenlon, ‘Garret Morphy and his circle’, Irish Arts Review Yearbook (1991–2), 135–48 [including list of works] A. O. Crookshank and the Knight of Glin, Ireland's painters, 1600–1940, 2nd edn (2002) J. Fenlon, ‘“A good painter may get good bread”: Thomas Pooley and Garret Morphey, two gentlemen painters’, Irish provincial cultures in the long eighteenth century, ed. R. Gillespie and R. F. Foster (2012), 220–30 The manuscripts of his grace the duke of Portland, 10 vols., HMC, 29 (1891–1931), 3. 411 T. Foulds, ‘“The Great Mogul”: Thomas Farr's books of disbursement and receipt, 1676 to 1691, for Henry, second duke of Newcastle’, Thoroton Society Record Series, 50 (2016)