SAMPSON TOWGOOD ROCH, MINIATURIST

IRISH ARTS REVIEW
SAMPSON TOWGOOD ROCH, MINIATURIST
lot 214, portrait of a gentleman, signed
and dated 1797, oval, 6.7 cm. in height,
in a gold frame with monogram on an
opalescent glass ground with a blue glass
surround on the reverse, fetched ?418,
while the pair of miniatures of Mr. and
Mrs. Michael Milner, one signed and
dated 1792, the other dated 1799, each
oval, 6 cm. in height, fetched ?308.
It will be apparent that Roch's life,
covering as it does, the high period of
Irish miniature painting, 1770-1830,
raises two broad paradoxes about the
history of European taste at this time.
First, although this period saw
changes of a cataclysmic nature in
politics and society, certain art forms
were developed, perfected and
popularized, which for their app
reciation, depended on stable, patrician,
conservative values. Secondly,
some of
these art forms have been arbitrarily
rejected in the past by scholars as
intrinsically insignificant.
A comparison between the miniature
portrait and the novel in this period is
not without interest. For each art form,
the major centres of dissemination were
London, Dublin and Bath. In both,
although certain explicit characteristics
distinguish the preoccupations of Irish
as opposed to English practitioners, the
development of each is in a common
idiom and style. It is pehaps not
accidental that Jane Austen herself
overtly compared her achievement as a
novelist to that of the miniaturist, when
she referred in a celebrated letter to
"the little bit (two inches wide) of Ivory
on which I work with so fine a brush as
"
produces little effect after much
labour"2, a comment which has led one
of the foremost critics of the English
novel to describe Austen's art as
"necessarily accompanied by
a narrative
technique analagous
to the miniatur
ist's"3. The most obvious point of
comparison is that both the novel and
miniature painting flourished with
particular brilliance at this time.
The history of the novel in this
period is well documented4. What is
less generally known is that by the
1780s, when Roch was established as an
artist, there was already a burgeoning
"school" of miniaturists in Dublin5.
George Place (fl. 1775-1809), Horace
Hone A.R.A. (1756-1825), and Charles
Robertson (1760-1821), were all
working in Dublin in a style similar to Scenes of rural life in the Youghal
area
their English contemporaries. Hone, for
example, was born in London and had
been trained there by his father,
Nathaniel (1718-1784). As far as we
know, all the celebrated Irish miniat
urists except John Comerford (c. 1770
1832), spent some time in England.
English painters of full-scale portraits,
such as Francis Wheatley R.A. (1747
1801), visited Ireland during the period
1779-1783. Tilly Kettle (1735-1786)
came to Dublin briefly in 1783, and
Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828) arrived
from America via London to paint in
Dublin, during the period 1788-1793.
The American miniaturist, Henry
Pelham, (1749-1806), after a period in
England, journeyed to Ireland at some
stage, after 17786. The highly accom
plished style of these practitioners in
fluenced the work of many local
painters.
Working in a
pandemic
or non
national style, Hone, Robertson and
Roch produced the best portraits by
Irish miniaturists. Their work may be
compared favourably with their English
counterparts, George Engleheart (1750
1829), and Ozias Humphry (1742
1810). Of these Richard Cosway (1742
1821) and John Smart (1740/41-1811)
were probably the best.
The success that some Irish painters
achieved may be judged by the fact that
they were commissioned to paint
members of the British Royal Family.
Hone was appointed miniature painter
to the Prince of Wales in 1795 and
Roch, who also painted members of the
Royal family was, it is said, offered a
knighthood, which he refused.
After the Act of Union in 1801,
Dublin ceased to be the seat of
parliament, and this led to a change in
Irish society. A great number of the
nobility and gentry came to regard
London as the new epicentre of power,
and therefore of culture7. This had
enormous
impact
on the amount and
type of patronage in Ireland. Roch
could find fewer commissions in Ireland
when he returned in 1822, although he
continued to paint and draw in semi
retirement.
Roch's life may be said to have fallen
into three periods
over a professional
career of over forty years. His early
period, 1757-1791, was spent mainly in
Waterford, Cork and Dublin, with
some travel in England. During his
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