Irish School
Oil on Canvas
76.20 x 63.50cm
2228-P
Acquired 2006
Although born into Anglo-Irish society, and with close political connections in England, as the long-serving Dean of St. Patrick´s Cathedral, Jonathan Swift was celebrated by the ordinary people of Dublin, whose rights and causes he often championed. Born in Hoey´s Court, Dublin, Swift had attended Kilkenny College before going on to study at Trinity College Dublin, where he received his BA in 1686. When William of Orange became King, Swift moved to England where he got a job as secretary to the diplomat Sir William Temple. At Temple´s home, Moor Park, Swift also tutored some of the servants´ children, including a young orphan Esther Johnson, who he nicknamed “Stella”. After receiving his MA degree from Hertford College Oxford, Swift was ordained a priest in the Church of Ireland and went to minister to a parish in Co. Antrim, where he remained just a short time before returning to Moor Park. After Temple died in 1699. Swift returned to Ireland and became chaplain to Lord Berkeley, a job that allowed him ample time to write and also to make regular visits to London, where he lobbied government on behalf of the Irish clergy, became a key negotiator for the Tory party, and fell in love with another orphan, Esther Vanhomrigh. This latest love in his life Swift nicknamed “Vanessa”, presumably to distinguish her from his other Esther. Apparently infatuated with Swift, Vanessa followed him to Ireland, where there was apparently a confrontation involving Stella. Between these complicated love affairs, Swift attempted to progress his career, but Queen Anne stymied these efforts. With the Whigs in power in England, Swift accepted the post of Dean of St. Patrick´s Cathedral, which he regarded as a disappointment, and indeed a form of exile, having hoped for a bishopric in England. However, at St. Patrick´s, Swift began to turn his writing skills in support of Irish causes and also began to write his best-known work, Gulliver´s Travels. Published in 1726, this was an instant success and established Swift as a writer of note. However, with the death of his beloved Stella two years later, followed by the passing of other close friends, Swift himself began a long descent into dreadful physical and mental illness. He died in 1745.
Irish School
Born in Clooney House in Co. Clare, the artist and architect Francis Bindon was the son of David Bindon, M.P. for Ennis. His mother, Dorothy Burton, was of the Burton family of Buncraggy House, near Clareabbey.As a young man, Bindon travelled extensively in Italy, and afterwards studied with the portrait painter Godfrey Kneller in London. A landowner and member of the Royal Dublin Society, Bindon was independently wealthy and therefore not obliged to produce flattering images of his sitters. Apart from churchmen such as Dr. Delany and Archbishop Cobbe, he is thought to have painted the blind harper Turlough O'Carolan, in a portrait now in the National Gallery of Ireland. Bindon also studied architecture with Sir Edward Lovett Pearce, and went on to design country houses, including Bessborough, Woodstock and Castle Morres, in Co. Kilkenny.
In his diary entry for June 1735, Swift had noted, with characteristic acerbity, "I have been fool enough to sit for my portrait at full-length by Mr. Bindon.' There are several portraits by Bindon of his friend Swift in existence, including versions in the National Portrait Gallery London, and the most famous version, in the Deanery of St. Patrick´s Cathedral. The half-length canvas in the Crawford Art Gallery collection, featured here, shows the satirist without the wig so common in eighteenth century portraits. It was painted probably in the same year as the other portraits by Bindon. This portrait was kept by Swift in the Deanery of St. Patricks and was bequeathed to his housekeeper Mrs. Ridgeway, in whose family it was preserved for many years. The plain wooden frame of the painting is made from wood taken from St. Patrick´s cathedral during renovations carried out in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries.
Peter Murray