CHARLES JERVAS (C. 1675-1739)
Portrait of Thomas Carter (c. 1682-1763) and his wife Mary, née Claxton
Oil on canvas,

The portrait of Thomas is signed, dated, 1734, and inscribed ‘Dublin’ and...

CHARLES JERVAS (C. 1675-1739)
Portrait of Thomas Carter (c. 1682-1763) and his wife Mary, née Claxton
Oil on canvas,

The portrait of Thomas is signed, dated, 1734, and inscribed ‘Dublin’ and ‘amicitiae ergo’ (‘for friendship’s sake’) and with extensive further inscriptions. Mary is housed in a frame made in about 1800 by Kearney’s, ‘Looking Glass Warehouse’, 49 Henry Street, Dublin, see label.

Provenance: By direct descent within the family of the sitters Thomas Carter (the sitter) to his son; Henry Boyle Carter (b. c. 1722) at Castlemartin, County Kildare (High Sheriff of County Kildare in 1763) who married Susanna Shaen, to his son; Thomas Carter b. 1753 at Castlemartin, County Kildare, to his son; William Henry Carter (1783-1859), to his son; Thomas Shaen Carter (1813-1875) at Watlington Park, Oxfordshire; By descent within the Carter family to Duncan Maclachlan Carter-Campbell, 8th of Possil (b. 1911) to his daughter Mary Elizabeth Carter-Campbell (b. 1953)

Exhibited (Thomas): The International Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures, Exhibition Palace, Dublin, 1865, lent by Thomas Shaen Carter (1813-1875) bears exhibition label; National Portrait Exhibition, London, 1867, lent by Thomas Shaen Carter (1813-1875) (no. 409), bears exhibition label

Literature, Walter Strickland, A Dictionary of Irish Artists, 2 vols (Dublin and London, 1913) vol.1 p. 548; Peter Aronsson, Dictionary of Irish Biography, www.dib.ie, accessed 20 August 2024; Peter Aronsson, Oxford, Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com, accessed 20 August 2024 Melanie Hayes, The Best Address in Town, Henrietta Street, Dublin and its First Residents (Dublin, 2020) p. 50 and for 9 Henrietta Street pp. 50-59

Engraved, The portrait of Thomas was engraved in mezzotint by John Brooks (fl. 1730-1756). This print was reissued by Jefferys and Herbert (Strickland, Dictionary, Vol. 1, 110).

 

 

 

Never previously offered on the open market, having been in the family of the sitters for a decade shy of three centuries, from 1734 until 2024, these portraits, by Charles Jervas, are iconic works of Georgian Ireland.

Thomas Carter, was one of the most influential figures of eighteenth-century Dublin, a Member of Parliament, Master of the Rolls and architectural patron on a lavish scale. His wife, Mary, née Claxton, was the first cousin of Edward Lovett Pearce (1699-1733), the great architect of Dublin’s Parliament House and Bellamont Forest, County Cavan.

The townhouse that Pearce designed for the couple, 9 Henrietta Street, has been described as ‘perhaps the most palatial residence’ on the famous street, itself ‘the best address’ in Dublin, with one of the most impressive stair halls in the city. ‘For more than three decades. This ambitious man held court there, establishing a prime position among parliamentary power brokers, social strategists and arbiters of taste’ (Melanie Hayes, The Best Address in Town, Henrietta Street, Dublin and its First Residents, 2020).

Offaly-born, Charles Jervas meanwhile was the Principal Painter to the Monarch, a friend of Pope and Swift, and although London-based he painted this portrait in Dublin in 1734 as he proudly inscribes on the canvas next to his signature.

Carter was born in Robertstown, County Meath, in the pivotal year 1690 and his life proceeded in parallel with the consolidation of the Williamite settlement of Ireland in all its complexity. His father, also Thomas, had performed ‘distinguished service’ for King William at the Boyne but the younger Thomas would adopt a stance as a Protestant patriot in the Dublin parliament which often set him in opposition to the Dublin Castle administration. Carter pursued an enormously successful and lucrative career at the Irish bar, before purchasing, for £11,000, the position of Master of the Rolls. In 1719 Carter married Mary Claxton, a daughter and heiress of Thomas Claxton and Lucy Pearce, making Mary, shown here, the first cousin of Edward Lovett Pearce. The year of his marriage Carter was elected for Trim, as a member of the parliament then sitting in Chichester House, Pearce’s great building on College Green would not be started for another decade. He later represented Hillsborough, County Down, between 1728-61. Other positions which Carter filled included Ranger of the Curragh, Governor of the Royal Hospital and Ranger of Dublin Castle while he was a leading figure in the passing of one of the early road acts.

By 1745 Carter was characterised by Lord Chesterfield, the viceroy, as ‘the leading person in the [Irish] Parliament’ while the Earl of Shelburne described him as ‘a man of a very original character, whose uncommon sagacity and shrewdness as well as depth of understanding, would have distinguished and advanced him in any country’. Not everyone agreed and, it must be said that principled idealism was not an obvious path to success in the murky politics of mid-century Ireland. Carter was described by Horace Walpole as ‘an able and intriguing man’ with a ‘slender reputation for integrity’. (Walpole was also distinctly antipathetic towards Jervas who had been so much patronised by his father, the Prime Minister, Robert Walpole). More recently Melanie Hayes notes that Carter was ‘known for his tricky personality and propensity for making enemies’. Carter did however stand up for the rights of the Dublin parliament against Westminster when, in 1753, he ‘opposed the claim of the crown to dispose of unappropriated revenue in the Irish exchequer and engineered the defeat of this money bill’ (Oxford, DNB). For this he fell from royal favour and was dismissed from his position as Master of the Rolls in 1754. He was, however, compensated with the office of Principal Secretary of State, and Keeper of the Privy Seal, which brought an additional salary of £1,200 per annum. If Carter was too shrewd an operator to be excluded from power completely, he was ‘regarded by Dublin Castle as one who was most against English interests in Ireland’ (ibid).

 

Carter’s great house at number 9 Henrietta Street is generally accepted as having been designed by Pearce and, while there is no documentary evidence to confirm this, his authorship is compellingly suggested by the sheer quality of the house and by Carter’s direct family connection’s to the architect. The house’s design clearly relates to No. 30 Old Burlington Street, London, designed, in 1721, by Lord Burlington (1694-1753) and Colen Campbell (1676- 1729), making a ‘tangible and tantalising’ connection between ‘the greatest figures in the Irish and English Palladian revival’ (Christine Casey, Dublin, 2005). Connections between the two houses can be traced via both patron and architect. Carter was politically very close to Henry (‘Speaker’) Boyle (1682-1764), later 1st Earl of Shannon (his neighbour at No. 11 Henrietta Street), who was a cousin of the ‘Architect-Earl’, while Burlington’s client at 30 Old Burlington Street was Algernon Coote (1689-1744), Earl of Mountrath, whose cousin, Thomas Coote of Cootehill (c. 1655 -1741), was Pearce’s uncle for whom he built Bellamont Forest, his Palladian masterpiece in County Cavan. For good measure, and illustrating how tightly-knit was this circle, Charles Jervas painted portraits of Algernon Coote and his wife Diana.

 

Friends of Jervas and cousins of Pearce, the Carters, husband and wife, sat at the heart of a key nexus of architectural and artistic patronage at the crucial moment in the 1730s when the confidence of Georgian Ireland was at its height, as best expressed in the extraordinary – if arguably hubristic – palazzi that the new elite, political, legal and ecclesiastical, built for themselves on Henrietta Street. Carter was a founding member of the Dublin Society and was a keen agricultural improver, ‘He imported the best breeds of cattle and built several mills for grinding corn’ (ibid). In addition to the 4,000 acres he inherited near Trim – and extensive estates in County Roscommon – in 1729 Carter took a lease on Castlemartin in County Kildare, which remained in his family until the end of the century. But it is Pearce’s extraordinary building at No 9 Henrietta Street that stands as ‘a very visible manifestation of [Carter’s] wealth and success, and provided the perfect setting in which to pursue his schemes for success’ (Hayes, op cit.). Carter died in his son’s residence Rathnally House, County Meath on 3 September 1763 and is buried in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Trim. No. 9 Henrietta Street is now owned by the Daughters of Charity.

 

Despite his seemingly prickly character, Carter clearly enjoyed a warm friendship with the artist Charles Jervas, a friendship commemorated in his portrait. The portrait of Thomas, is signed (Jervas signs his work exceptionally rarely) and is dated 1734. It is further inscribed as having been painted in Dublin, rare evidence of the London-based artist’s practice of painting on his not infrequent visits home. An obvious place for Jervas to have set up his temporary studio was in his client and friend’s house in Henrietta Street. For this was a special commission and the portrait of Thomas is further inscribed by Jervas ‘amicitiae ergo’ for the sake of friendship attesting to the close relationship between artist and the sitters. The portrait of Thomas is likely to have been completed first, no doubt to hang in Henrietta Street. It was engraved by John Brooks. Carter is shown in his law library surround by the volumes of precedent. The portrait of Mary by contrast shows her in a sylvan setting gesturing to her husband. Jervas portrays his friend as a genial figure suggesting another side of his character to the scheming lawyer on the make; Francis Plowden describes Carter ‘keeping the table in a roar of laughter by his archness, vivacity and wit’.

 

Charles Jervas was the most successful Irish-born artist of the first half of the eighteenth century and among the first Irish artist to study in Italy. He was born in, or about, 1675 in Shinrone, King County (Offaly) and is recorded in 1697-98 in the letters of administration for the estate of his father who had died at Cape May in America as ‘Charles Jervas, of the City of Dublin, Gent’. He studied in London under Sir Godfrey Kneller (1645-1723), with whom he lived for a year, and in 1694 he made copies of the Raphael Cartoons at Hampton Court. With the support of patrons including Dr George Clarke of All Souls College, Oxford (who bought some paintings and lent him funds) he travelled to Italy, via Paris, in 1699. Jervas stayed in Rome (where he was known as Carlo Jervassi) for about ten years, copying old masters and improving his drawing skills. On his return to London in 1708/9 he commenced on his successful career as a portrait painter, marrying a wealthy widow, Penelope Hume. His studio in Cleveland Court, St. James’s and house at Hampton in Middlesex became centres of the London literary world. Among his friends and sitters were Joseph Addison (1672-1719) and Alexander Pope (1688- 1744) (whom he taught to paint and who eulogised him in verse), along with Isaac Newton (1642-1727). Of particular, note, too, is his series of portraits of Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) who sat for him several times between 1709 and 1716. Moving in such circles, it is not surprising that Jervas developed literary pretensions himself, and he translated Don Quixote, though this was not published until 1742, after his death.

 

Jervas revisited Ireland on several occasions. He is recorded here in 1716, staying with Swift in St Patrick’s Deanery, and again for a lengthy period at the end of the decade, once more a guest of Swift and, in addition to producing a translation of Niccolò Machiavelli (1469- 1527), on this visit, he was certainly painting portraits, including one of William King (1650-1729) Archbishop of Dublin. Further visits occurred in 1729 and 1734 where he signed this portrait of Carter. Among his other Irish sitters were William ‘Speaker’ Conolly (1662-1729), and John Boyle, later 5th earl of Cork (1707-62) (Swift’s friend) and members of the Cosby family of Stradbally. Jervas also maintained an estate in Ireland. In 1723, on the death of Kneller, Jervas was appointed Principal Painter to George I, a position he retained under his successor. He visited Italy again in 1738, possibly to acquire works of art for the crown but also ‘in hope of some reprieve from asthma’ and died shortly after his return. His large collection of paintings was sold by auction in March 1740. Thomas Carter, shown in this friendship portrait, acted as the executor of Jervas’s will.

 

Adam’s are very grateful to Peter Aronsson and Melanie Hayes whose published researches on Thomas Carter and 9 Henrietta Street inform this note.

 

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