Portrait bust of Robert Stewart, first Marquess of Londonderry, MP (1739-1821)
Gaetano Fabbrini (c.1769 - 1849)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
1823
Materials
Plaster.
Place of origin
Belfast
Collection
Mount Stewart, County Down
NT 1656089.3
Summary
Sculpture, plaster; Portrait bust of Robert Stewart, First Marquess of Londonderry (1739-1821); Gaetano Fabbrini (c. 1769-1849); 1823. A posthumous plaster portrait bust of the first Marquess of Londonderry by the Florentine-born artist Gaetano Fabbrini who for many years was resident in Belfast working as a portrait painter. This is the prime signed and dated version of two at Mount Stewart. The model appears to be the only sculpture that can be associated with the artist.
Full description
A portrait bust in plaster of Robert Stewart, First Marquess of Londonderry (1739-1821), depicting the sitter facing forwards and slightly downwards, dressed in a tightly-buttoned coat, over which is a loose drape, and with around his neck a cravatte. On an octagonal tapering base. The plaster is very thin and there is a small hole in the front of the bust; slight damage to the lower edges of the socle. This portrait of Robert Stewart, first marquess of Londonderry, is the prime version of a plaster bust, signed by Gaetano Fabbrini and dated 1823, thus two years after Lord Londonderry’s death. A second version, also at Mount Stewart (NT 1220125.1) has no signature or date. The bust is posthumous, the compressed ears suggesting that it is based on a death mask of the sitter, a cast of the face taken after death. Gaetano Fabbrini was born in Florence. Nothing is known about his early years, but in 1814 he was appointed drawing master and teacher of Italian at the Belfast Academical Institution. In 1815 he published, with Francis Finlay, a pamphlet with rules and exercises for learning Italian (G. Fabbrini and F.C. Finlay, Rules and Exercises on the modern Syntax of the Italian Language; as taught in the Belfast Academical Institution, Belfast 1815). Fabbrini also at this time practised as a poet, publishing a sonnet on the death of Princess Charlotte in childbirth, in November 1817 (Jonathan Jeffrey Wright, The ‘Natural Leaders’ and their World. Politics, Culture and Society in Belfast, c. 1801-1832, Liverpool 2012, p. 95). However, he seems to have quarrelled with the other staff of the Academical Institution and was dismissed from his post in 1820. In 1822 Fabbrini appealed to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquis Wellesley, for reinstatement to his position from which he claimed he had been ‘illegally and suddenly’ removed by the directors of the institution (National Archives of Ireland, CSO/RP/1822/1801). In the 1840s he was still agitating for a proper acknowledgement of the wrongs he continued to claim had been done against him (See the Belfast News-Letter for 10 September 1841, 19 July 1842, 4 July 1845). After his dismissal Fabbrini practised as a portrait painter in Belfast, but he also continued to teach Italian, in 1833 placing an advertisement in the Belfast News-Letter announcing that ‘being free from some of his late engagements’, Sig. Fabbrini could now take a small number of private pupils. An accompanying editorial piece noted that Fabbrini’s ‘erudite talents are thoroughly known over the whole North ot Ireland ‘ (Belfast News-Letter, 3 and 6 December 1833). In 1834, 1835 and 1845 Fabbrini exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin and, on its establishment in 1836, was made an honorary member of the Belfast Association of Artists. He ran his own school, the Belfast Italian Drawing Academy, being described in the 1843-44 Belfast Directory as a teacher of drawing. In December 1844, he announced the establishment of his new School of Design in Little May Street, with the Marquess of Londonderry heading a small body of local dignitaries who had supported and enabled the establishment of the school (Belfast News-Letter, 17 December 1844). Fabbrini seems though to have fallen on hard times in his later years. He died in the Union Workhouse Hospital in Belfast in July 1849, of cholera at the age of 80, and was buried on 21 July in the Clifton Street Cemetery, in the Strangers Ground. No paintings by Gaetano Fabbrini are currently known to survive. In 1836 he exhibited two paintings of the Entombment of Christ at the first exhibition of the Belfast Association of Artists, but they seem not to have been mentioned in any of the reviews for the exhibition, leading one of his former pupils to write a long and angry letter to the Belfast News-Letter under the name Discipulus, lauding the pictures which the author thought were unquestionably the best in the exhibition (Belfast News-Letter, 18 October 1836). The letter is important, since it also refers to the submission to the exhibition by Fabbrini, who was not previously known to have worked as a sculptor, of a sculpted bust of William Legge of Malone. As that sculpture is untraced, the two versions of the bust of the first Marquess at Mount Stewart seem to be the only currently known secure works by this artist, who clearly over several decades was a moderately well-known individual within the world of the arts in Belfast. Jeremy Warren May 2022
Provenance
On loan to the National Trust from Lady Mairi Bury (1921-2009) since 1976; accepted by HM Government in lieu of Inheritance Tax and allocated to the National Trust in 2013.
Marks and inscriptions
On back: : Gaetano Fabbrini Published 1823
Makers and roles
Gaetano Fabbrini (c.1769 - 1849), sculptor
References
Strickland 1913: W. G. Strickland, Dictionary of Irish Artists, 2 vols.1913, I, p. 329.