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Lot Essay
John Butts, who was from Cork, was a pupil of the relatively unknown landscape painter Rogers, and practised for several years in his native city before moving to Dublin in 1757, where he worked predominantly as a scene painter in both Crow Street and Smock Alley. In his Memoirs of the Royal Academicians and an Authentic History of The Professors of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Ireland (published in 1796) Anthony Pasquin remarked of him that 'his landscapes were impressive copies from the wild scenes which abound in the County of Cork and the romantic views on the margin of the Blackwater. No man was more happy in his choice of nature; his breadth of light and shadow and harmonious colouring are in a high degreee fascinating; and the facility with which he painted created wonder'. Pasquin also mentioned that in Dublin he shared a garret with the picture cleaner and forger Chapman 'producing gems of art, while Chapman, to please an ignorant employer was mutilating, by rubbing and daubing, the productions of the best masters'. An indication of the high esteem in which he was held is given by his pupil James Barry in a letter to Dr. Sleigh in Cork having learnt of Butts' death 'I am indeed sensibly touched with the fate of poor Butts ... who with all his merit never met with anything but cares and misery, which I may say hunted him into the very grave' remarking of his work in Dublin that 'his fancy, which was luxuriant, he confined to its just bounds, his tone of colouring grew more variegated and concordant, and his penciling, which was always spirited, assumed a tenderness adn vivacity'. Barry also commented that 'His example and works were my first guide and was what enamoured me with the art itself'.
Butts died young, aged only thirty seven, and relatively few works by him are known. The present landscape is a rare example of a work by the artist known to have been signed, inscribed and dated by the artist and is important in providing a benchmark from which one can appreciate and understand his work. The present picture is recorded as having born a latin inscription 'D.M/IOANs BUT/TS COR HIB/PICTOR INV/FECQUE DUBLE ANO MDCC/LX ID APR AET SVAE XXXII' on the reverse of the original canvas (before it was relined) which reads in translation 'Into the hands of the shades, John Butts of Cork in Ireland, Painter, designed and made Dublin in the year 1760 on the ides of April, aged 32'. This composition shows clearly how influenced Butts was by the classical landscape painting tradition and in particular the work of Claude and Poussin whose work he would have known principally through printed sources.
Butts died young, aged only thirty seven, and relatively few works by him are known. The present landscape is a rare example of a work by the artist known to have been signed, inscribed and dated by the artist and is important in providing a benchmark from which one can appreciate and understand his work. The present picture is recorded as having born a latin inscription 'D.M/IOANs BUT/TS COR HIB/PICTOR INV/FECQUE DUBLE ANO MDCC/LX ID APR AET SVAE XXXII' on the reverse of the original canvas (before it was relined) which reads in translation 'Into the hands of the shades, John Butts of Cork in Ireland, Painter, designed and made Dublin in the year 1760 on the ides of April, aged 32'. This composition shows clearly how influenced Butts was by the classical landscape painting tradition and in particular the work of Claude and Poussin whose work he would have known principally through printed sources.