Lot 118: Stephen Slaughter

Stephen Slaughter
1697-1765
portrait of william fitzmaurice (1694-1747), 2nd earl and 21st baron of kerry
three-quarter length, standing in a landscape, wearing a blue coat and gold and silver edged waistcoat, resting on a cannon, with Ross Castle beyond
signed l.r.: Stephen Slaughter/Pinxit/ Dublin 1744, and inscribed: Lord William/Fitzmaurice/Earl of Kerry/ Governor of Ross
oil on canvas
127 by 101.5 cm., 50 by 40 in.
The sitter is wearing the elaborate uniform of a civil governor, his left arm resting on a cannon, with a somewhat stylised view of Ross Castle, Kiltomey, Co. Kerry, behind him. The castle was built by the O'Donoghue Ross on the shore of Loch Leane, in the sixteenth century and equipped with Swedish Findlater cannons, two of which still remain there. An old prophecy said that it could only be taken from the water by a 'Man of War' and so, during the Civil War a Cromwellian commander, General Ludlow, transported a large boat across land to the lake. Seeing the boat and the prophecy fulfilled, the Royalist defenders under Lord Muskerry surrendered. It then passed into the hands of the Browne family, and soon after the Williamite Wars became a permanent military garrison. The original castle consisted of a square tower within a bawn wall with two round towers. In the mid eighteenth century a permanent barracks was built to house two companies of infantry and a governor. This building, the round towers and one of the cannons are depicted.
The sitter was the eldest of three sons of Thomas Fitzmaurice, 1st Earl of Kerry, and his wife Anne, daughter of the celebrated entrepreneur, landowner and Surveyor of Ireland, Sir William Petty. A striking couple, Swift described Lady Kerry as 'most egregiously ugly', and, in the words of his nephew Lord Shelburne, Lord Kerry was 'the most severe character which can be imagined, obstinate and inflexible'. The family lived in great splendour at Lixnaw, County Kerry, and Swift described their style of living as 'superior to any family whatever in Ireland'.
Lord William joined the Coldstream Guards in 1716, but left after only two years, to the great annoyance of his father, who sued him for the return of £3000 advanced to purchase his commission. The court decided in favour of the sitter, but his father subsequently revenged himself by witholding William's marriage jointure, twice. His first wife, Elizabeth, was a widow of the Leeson family, whose famous art collection is now in the National Gallery of Ireland. The marriage was legally controversial, but by 1736 she was dead, childless, and in 1738 William married Lady Gertrude Lambert, daughter of the 4th Earl of Cavan, a celebrated soldier and Privy Councillor. The marriage produced two children, a son and a daughter, but the 1st Earl of Kerry remained hostile and according to Lord Shelburne he responded to the news of his grandson's birth with the words 'The house of Lixnaw is no more!' This exclamation was to prove curiously prophetic.
At his succession in 1741, the 2nd Earl of Kerry became one of the richest and most powerful men in Ireland, taking a seat in the Irish House of Lords in 1743. Three years later he became a Privy Councillor in Ireland, Governor of Kerry, Lord Lieutenant of Kerry and Custos Rotulorum (Master of the Rolls). At his untimely death in 1747, still hating his late father, he refused to be buried in the family vault at Kiltomey. Thus a new circular domed mausoleum, known as 'The Monument', was built at Lixnaw, and he was the only Fitzmaurice ever to be buried there. During the Irish Rebellion of 1798 'The Monument' was despoiled, and the lead from Lord Kerry's coffin was used for bullets. The building itself was finally destroyed in the 1950s by an encroaching quarry.
This portrait would certainly have passed to his son and heir, the 3rd Earl of Kerry, who married Anastasia Daley, a Roman Catholic divorcee twenty years older than himself, in 1768. Despite their enormous wealth (the 2nd Earl's estate was not entailed, and Lady Kerry herself was an heiress), the couple found Irish society hostile to their alliance, and so they moved first to London in the late 1760s, and then in 1778 to Paris, where they leased a magnificent hotel particulier in the rue d'Artois. The furnishing accounts for their various properties, which survive in the Archives Nationales in Paris, describe a degree of extravagance unparalleled among the contemporary Irish, if not the English and French aristocracy. But the Kerrys were living far beyond their means, and to make ends meet, as Shelburne bitterly informs us, 'They sold every acre of land which had been in the hands of the family since Henry II'. By the end of the eighteenth century, all that remained of their once vast Irish estate was Kiltomey churchyard.
The Kerrys were forced to flee Paris following the French Revolution, when their remaining property, presumably including this portrait, was confiscated. In 1793, following a failed attempt to recover some of the seized items (which led two of their servants to the guillotine), the Kerrys abandoned their collection entirely, and its subsequent fate is unknown.
Provenance:
Commissioned by the sitter in 1744;
Thence by descent to Francis Thomas, 3rd Earl of Kerry;
Probably seized by the Revolutionary Government in Paris in 1792
Sotheby's acknowledge Patrick Pilkington for his research on the Earls of Kerry.