Lot 94: Attributed to William Fisher (1817-1895) Molly

Attributed to William Fisher (1817-1895) Molly Bawn Oil on canvas, 105 x 131cm (41¼ x 51½'') Inscribed ''J. Fisher 'Molly Bawn' on slip. It is thought that this is the work 'Molly Bawn' exhibited at the RHA 1850, Cat. No. 37 by William Fisher According to Strickland, Fisher was born in Cork, where he made a name from an early age for his portrait and subject paintings. He left to study in Italy, becoming a member of the Florentine Academy and he subsequently settled in London. He showed about 48 titles at London's Royal Academy between 1840 and 1884, and nearly a third as many again at Dublin's Royal Hibernian Academy. Since other works bearing his signature have yet to emerge, the titles he showed at these prominent galleries, together with more at the British Institution and The Cork Exhibition indicate that portraiture was his prime occupation. His portrait of Walter Savage Landor (of 1839), in the collection of The National Portrait Gallery, although of an altogether different, darker figure, is not dissimilar in style & brushwork to this one. Here a young peasant girl is the focus for the narrative. Her lack of a wedding ring, and the fact that she does not wear a white bonnet, tell us that she is unmarried. She is lit by a warm, low glow of firelight from the right, where the handles of some tongs can be glimpsed, beneath some onions and fish: the smoke helping to preserve them. The interior as well as her clothes, with her petticoats tucked up around her waist, were all typical of nineteenth century rural Ireland. Low Irish or Dutch spinning wheels such as hers had been introduced into Ireland by the ruling English to improve the quality of flax spinning, and hence of linen. Spinners used a foot treadle to turn the wheel, thus allowing both hands to feed the thread evenly onto the spindle. Here the bundle of carefully prepared flax can be seen held cleanly aloft and tied by a red ribbon on the distaff. Over her shoulder is her suitor, who is in turn lit from the other side by the suggestion of a full moon, in a starlit sky beyond the open window. He carries a shillelagh and wears a Carolan hat and a coat with a high collar, which was fashionable male attire in mid-nineteenth century in rural Ireland. Molly Bawn was the woman whose tragic death was lamented by her betrothed lover, in a popular ballad of the same name. The young man accidentally shot and killed her while out hunting at night. There are numerous subsequent versions, but the tragedy described in John Keegan Casey's (1816-1849) poem happened by a lake: alluding to her as young and slender, and 'her eyes they shone like diamonds bright'...'Entranced I gazed on Molly Bawn' By Claudia Kinmonth PhD M.A. (R.C.A.) author of Irish Country Furniture 1700-1950 & Irish Rural Interiors in Art (Yale University Press, 1993, 2006).