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Thomas Roberts |
Thomas Roberts (1748-1778)The highly talented Irish landscape artist Thomas Roberts was born in Waterford in 1748. His brother Thomas Sautell was also a painter. Roberts studied drawing and fine art painting at the Royal Dublin Society art school, where he was taught landscape painting by James Mannin, and later worked under George Mullins. Adopted by art patrons Duke of Leinster and Lord Powerscourt, Thomas Roberts was only 18 when he began exhibiting at the Royal Dublin Society of Artists. He showed a total of fifty-six paintings at the RDS before his premature death, establishing a reputation as an outstanding painter, and one whose services were in great demand especially for topographical landscapes. Known especially for his views of park-like scenery and country seats, Thomas Roberts received a number of commissions from Irish landowners who wanted him to capture the views and visual aspects of their properties. At this time, a century before the first photograph, paying a landscape artist to capture the property on canvas was a landowner's only way of recording the beauty of his land and the architecture of his buildings. Sadly, Thomas Roberts died from consumption at the age of 30. Thus ended the life of the most talented Irish landscape artists of the eighteenth century. His perceived standing as a painter may be gauged from the fact that in 2004-5 three of his paintings sold for a total of almost 1 million Euros. Roberts' paintings can be seen in the National Gallery of Ireland and are represented in other collections including the Office of Public Works. Sorry, but at this time we have no images of Thomas Robert's paintings. |
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More Information About Visual Arts in Ireland • For details of other 18th century
painters, see: Irish Artists: Paintings
and Biographies. • NOTE: To update Thomas Roberts's biography, click Here. Irish
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