View of the Mountains of Mourne from the Temple of the Winds at Mount Stewart
Solomon Delane (1727 - Dublin 1812)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1786
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
940 x 1270 mm
Place of origin
County Down
Order this imageCollection
Mount Stewart, County Down
NT 2900069
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, View of the Mountains of Mourne from the Demesne at Mount Stewart with the Temple of the Winds to the Left, by Solomon Delane (c.1727-1812), 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). Camden made frequent visits to Mount Stewart and was greatly liked by his daughter’s new family. He was to have a profound influence on young Robert Stewart (1769-1822), later Viscount Castlereagh and 2nd marquess of Londonderry, influencing his education and political thinking. As the demesne was developed and the first, modest, house built, accommodation was provided in a series of converted cottages or “cabins” that were eventually incorporated into the house itself. At about this time, Camden wrote “my apartment is a snug cabin upon the shore of a vast arm of the sea, and commanding and very fine and extensive prospect….” He was struck by the “amazing variety if islands, creeks and bays which appear among cultivated hills in the most picturesque manner” [H Montgomery Hyde, The Londonderrys, 1979, p5] In this view, the Temple of the Winds is glimpsed through a gap in the trees on the extreme left-hand side of the painting. Our eye is drawn into the work by the pale surface of a drive that sweeps down to the centre right between low hills towards Strangford Lough. Nearest to us a group of three children and a woman pause on the road; further along a labourer can be seen, holding a rake over his shoulder and beyond him again is a man on a horse. The brightness of the sky is reflected in the waters of the lough, broken here and there by the low islands so typical of Strangford Lough. In the far distance can be seen the silhouette of the Mourne Mountains. Silhouetted against the waters of the lough, at the base of the hill, are the roof and chimneys of Mount Stewart house. Built on the edge of the lough, it commanded fine views over the water towards the Mournes to the south-west. These two views by Delane may have been commissioned to mark the completion of the building of the Temple of the Winds, which was intended to be a statement of Robert Stewart’s refined taste and elevated social standing, having been on the Grand Tour in the 1760s and elected MP for County Down to sit in the Irish House of Commons in 1771. The architect 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 c80 BCE. These drawings were published in The Antiquities of Athens, 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. 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. ( F Bailey 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