This fine mid-19th-century oil painting by Irish artist Robert Richard Scanlan (1801-1876) depicts a rider atop a muscular bay hunter with a rolling landscape beyond. Scanlan was an accomplished painter of portraits, animals, and genre subjects, also an illustrator.
Wearing a top hat, tailcoat, brown waistcoat, and blue stock, he sits bolt-upright under a glowering sky. The horse is presumably his prized hunter - athletic, taut and groomed. The pair cut quite a figure against the undulant Brontë-esque scenery.
Scanlan was born in Dublin and, as a child, one gets the impression that he spent every free moment sketching and doodling. He’s known predominantly as a watercolourist but also produced masterful works in oil.
His artistic career began in earnest during the 1820s when he undertook numerous portraits for the landed gentry and rising middle classes. Often, these were delicate works, fiddly in their execution, and enlivened with subtle colouring. He debuted at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1826 with ‘Portraits of Lizzy, Georgy and Arthur, the children of Captain A. E. Kennedy’.
Alongside these, he produced numerous genre scenes, some of which illustrated the plight of the poor. While also gaining commissions to paint the beloved animals of wealthy landowners.
It appears he left Ireland around 1829 as he married a Shropshire lass, Eliza Rea in Ludlow. The pair subsequently moved to Plymouth, where he was initiated as a freemason. In 1831, he joined a fraternity known as the ‘Blue Friars’, which is recorded in a chronicle titled ‘The Blue Friars: Their Sayings and Doings’ by William Henry Kearley Wright. It refers to the various meetings held by the group and explains that “the Blue Friars were not a religious order: they dwelt not in a monastery, they were not sworn to celibacy: they did not forswear the good things of life, nor forego its enjoyments and pleasures. On the contrary, they were men of mirth and wisdom.”
Their activities were rather jocular. “Lay Brother Scanlan, together with John Franklin and Henry Giles, partook with the Fraternity of a Feast of Mirth and Mutton, and an overflow of Wit and Wine”. “Lay Brother Scanlan perpetrated a sketch of the Brethren sitting in conclave, which when completed will doubtless be published in the Isle of Sky.”
From Plymouth, he headed to London and in 1837, his ‘Lord Mount Charles and Favourite Pony’ was shown at the Royal Academy. This undoubtedly elevated his credentials and further commissions followed including for this piece, circa 1840. He also painted Prime Ministers, Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington.
Popular with London’s printsellers, his drawings were often reproduced as lithographs, particularly his comical sketches of horse derbies. Many of his witty observational pieces were later engraved and published as ‘Barney Bryan’s Sketchbooks’. A critic praised his “fine flowing style, combined with correctness”.
Despite these successes, for reasons unknown, he faced bankruptcy in 1849 and returned to Ireland a few years later to take a post as the Headmaster of the Cork School of Design. His efforts were well regarded and he was instrumental in the development of numerous budding Irish artists.
Following this, he moved to London once again and took a house in Chelsea with his wife and daughter, Elsie. Continuing to work for both printsellers and private clients until his death in 1876.
He’s represented at the Walker Art Gallery, Government Art Collection, National Gallery of Ireland, and The Courtauld.
Signed in the lower centre and held in a later frame.
Learn more about Robert Richard Scanlan in our directory.
Medium: Oil on canvas
Overall size: 34½” x 27½” / 88cm x 70cm
Year of creation: c. 1840
Provenance: Bonhams Sale, London, 1975 / Private collection, UK.
Condition: Cleaned. Revarnished. Canvas relined. Craquelure in areas. The paint layer is stable. Frame in good condition with minor age-related wear.
Artist’s auction maximum: £4,790 for ‘Donney Brooke Fair’, Oil on canvas, Sotheby’s, 19th Century European Paintings, Drawings And Sculpture, New York, 1992 (lot 264).
Our reference: BRV1937
