The Temple of the Winds at Mount Stewart, County Down
Solomon Delane (1727 - Dublin 1812)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
circa 1786
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
940 x 1271 mm
Place of origin
County Down
Order this imageCollection
Mount Stewart, County Down
NT 2900068
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, The Temple of the Winds at Mount Stewart, County Down, with Scrabo Hill in the Distance, by Solomon Delane (c.1727-1812), circa 1786.
Full description
These two works by Delane (2900068 & 2900069) are the earliest known landscape paintings of Mount Stewart and were probably commissioned to commemorate the completion of the Temple of the Winds in 1786 to the design of James ‘Athenian’ Stuart (1713-88). According to Crookshank and Glin [The Painters of Ireland c1660-1920, 1978], Solomon Delane learnt his trade in the Dublin Society Schools under Benjamin West and won a premium in 1750. His family came from Tipperary. He had moved to London by 1763 and was elected a Fellow of the Society of Artists, moving on to Rome by 1766 where he stayed for several years, visiting Sicily, Athens, and Augsburg. During these years he sent works back to London for exhibition. He returned to London in 1782, specialising in classical landscapes, influenced by Claude Lorrain. He was probably back in Ireland by 1784 when he was commissioned to paint four landscape views of Dublin by the then Viceroy, the 4th duke of Rutland. How the Mount Stewart commission came about is not known, but it is most likely to have been through the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, 1st Earl Camden, father-in-law to Robert Stewart. Lady Frances Pratt, Camden’s eldest daughter in married Robert Stewart as his second wife in 1775, (his first being Lady Sarah Seymour-Conway (d.1770), daughter of the earl of Hertford). The Temple of the Winds, shown here in its prominent position on a hill overlooking Strangford Lough, was largely complete by 1786. It is built of Scrabo sandstone, quarried from the hill seen in the distant left-hand side of this view. The Scrabo quarry provided fine cut stone for many buildings in Belfast over the following decades and for the extended Mount Stewart house in the 1840s. Scrabo Hill and the surrounding areas of Newtownards and Comber were Stewart-owned, purchased by Alexander Stewart in 1744. The architect for the Temple of the Winds was James ‘Athenian’ Stuart, who based his design on the measured drawings he and Nicholas Revett had taken of the Tower of the Winds in Athens, also known as the Tower of Andronicus Cyrrhestes, built c80BCE. They published the drawings in The Antiquities of Athens in 1762. Designs for the building were being discussed in March 1780 when Camden wrote to Robert Stewart that he had procured a wooden model of the temple which he proposed to despatch to Dublin “with the first ship that sails”. Camden’s account was only paid in 1782 “For the following paid Lord Camden, The Model of the Temple which he had paid 28:5:6. [PRONI D/654/H/1/1, p14]. Camden regularly visited Mount Stewart and was clearly involved in and supportive of Stewart’s plans to enhance the demesne with this statement classical building; Delane’s return to Dublin, his recent work for Rutland and his familiarity with classical buildings and landscapes may well have placed him as the logical choice for this commission. The view of the lough is given a Claudian grandeur, the scale of features such as Scrabo are enhanced and the sweep of the waters reflect the threatening grey clouds above. On the right, crossing a low bridge is an open carriage and horses; further along the road are two riders- a lady riding side-saddle and a man. Barely visible, partly hidden by a low hill, is Mount Stewart house, built in the early 1780s: a modest, two-storey white-washed dwelling, later much modified and extended. Robert Stewart’s long-term plan was to build a grand house further inland, most likely to designs by Wyatt [Dr Anne Casement, The House That Never was: James Wyatt’s Unbuilt Mount Stewart, Apollo/ National Trust, 2008], with Athenian Stuart’s temple, the epitome of classical taste, a tantalising precursor of grander things to come, though in the end the Wyatt house was never built. (FB, 2024)
Provenance
Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the National Trust for display at Mount Stewart, 2014.
Makers and roles
Solomon Delane (1727 - Dublin 1812), artist