Erskine Nicol R.S.A., A.R.A. 1825-1904

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A Deputation—A Landlord Receives a Tenant Deputation in the Main Hall of Howth Castle

Oil on canvas, 105 x 143 cm.
Signed and dated 1865

Exhibited: London, Royal Academy, 1865, number 514; Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, 1866, number 645

Provenance: Collection of W. Leigh Clare, Esq., (An Ejected Family, now part of the National Gallery of Ireland, NGI.4577, also formed part of Clare’s collection); ... ; collection of Jabez A. Bostwick (founding partner of Standard Oil) and Helen C. Bostwick, New York; their sale, American Art Association, Madison Square South, New York City, 20-21 January 1921, lot 85; bought by Kraushaar Galleries, New York; …; Collection of Don F. Gaston (1934-2021) (owner of the American professional basketball team, Boston Celtics)

Erskine Nicol first travelled to Ireland in 1846, and regularly revisited the island, establishing a connection with the plight of the Irish people during the worst years of the Great Famine and its fallout. Nicol’s works of social realism are significant for their accuracy as well as political insight. Continuing the artist’s association with carefully observed Irish interiors, the setting for A Deputation is the south-east corner of the main hall of Howth Castle as can be reasoned by the inclusion of the short staircase, curved bannister, and the doorway’s architrave. For compositional purposes, the recessed window is set deeper into the room to accommodate the table and many figures, and a step is missing from the staircase to call attention to the tapestry of the lit room beyond. As well, the stair runner, fur rug, and ornate carpet feature in other recorded views of the room by Nicol, including Au Revoir, 1864 (Gorry Gallery Catalogue, 14-22 June 2001, 16-17) and Reading the Letter, 1864 (Christie’s, 12 May 2005, lot 89). Au Revoir appears to mark the death of Mary St. Lawrence, one of the young daughters of the St. Lawrence family. Howth Castle, extensively altered in 1738, occupies land that had been in the St. Lawrence family since the twelfth century when Almeric, the first Lord of Howth, came to Ireland with John de Courcy.

In addition to the room itself, the two standing figures in the centre of the composition will be recognisable to those familiar with Nicol’s work in the 1860s. In this gallery’s last exhibition Dr Amélie Dochy-Jacquard explored the identity of the sitter known as ‘Cox’ in Nicol’s Waiting for a Bite, 1866 (Gorry Gallery Catalogue, 1-19 November 2021, 18-19). In A Deputation the same sitter can be recognised as the standing figure to the right, worriedly clutching his hat to his chest. The most noteworthy depiction of ‘Cox’ is in a painting titled Paddy Cox’s Love Letter, 1864 (Sotheby’s, 12 May 1981, lot 325), giving rise to the link with the surname Cox. His earliest known inclusion in a painting by Nicol is in A Warm Day, 1862 (Christie's, 19 October 2015, lot 390), painted in the same year as when Nicol established a studio in the settlement of Clonave, on the shore of Lough Derravaragh, County Westmeath, which he used until poor health made long-distance travel unworkable. While Griffith’s Valuation lists Martin Cox and John Cox as inhabitants of the townland of Clonava at the time of Nicol’s move to the area, it should also be noted that the 1901 Census records a Patrick Cox of the same townland, a 78-year-old literate farmer. The sitter standing to the left of ‘Cox’ is James Blake, then resident of Clonave. Blake was regularly employed by Nicol to sit for paintings, including An Irish Emigrant Landing at Liverpool, 1871 (National Galleries of Scotland). In 1866 Nicol arranged for Blake to come to London where he entertained the Irishman and painted him at ‘Clonave Villa’, Nicol’s home at Pembridge Square, Bayswater. On this visit, which produced the book, Jim Blake’s Tour from Clonave to London (M.H. Gill, Dublin, 1867), Blake recalls being recognised by a London acquaintance of Nicol: ‘he knew me, he so often saw me in the pictures.’

In A Deputation, a painting with a strong political dimension, a group of rural labourers in distinctive garb and muddied boots visit the home of a member of the landowning class. Nicol painted many scenes highlighting the vulnerability of tenants, struggling under the heel of their landlords, and as the title suggests, the three men are likely acting on behalf of a larger group, perhaps a family threatened by an imminent eviction from their home, or numerous local tenants in arrears. The visitors present anxious and resigned looks, suggestive of a distressing conclusion to the meeting. In contrast, the landed gent sits at ease, gesticulating freely in faux powerlessness, with his legs crossed in clean cream trousers and unmuddied leather boots and spurs. The painting is an affecting depiction of the chasm between the rural population and the owners of the lands upon which they toiled. Unappreciated by those depicted, the painting presents the working class in far greater numbers, foreshadowing the recognition of this power and the Land War to come.

Contemporaneous reviews of A Deputation standout for their lack of empathy toward the depicted tenants, however. British art critic, James Dafforne wrote, ‘…the squire of the parish, or the member of parliament, whichever the gentleman may be who is thus honoured by the visit, must have felt a little uncomfortable on seeing a company of clownish rustics, not over nice in their attire and with heavy mud-covered boots on their feet, introduced into his reception-room, heedless of the injury they may do to a rich Turkey carpet’ (The Art-Journal, Volume 9, 1870, 66-67). Historically, there was little demand for paintings of political subjects, particularly those paintings most sympathetic to the underprivileged conditions of Ireland’s poorest cottiers and agricultural labourers. Here, Nicol, who is occasionally maligned for his representations of the Irish peasantry, ignores the commercial fashions of the time and instead poignantly depicts the hardship and humility of a group he found worthy of the primary focus of his oeuvre.

In 1882 the Irish Land Commission and the Land Courts were instituted under the Irish Land Act of 1881, conceding to the demands of the Land League for fair rents, amongst other conditions. The new land courts were empowered to fix ‘judicial rent’ upon applications made by tenants. As a result, although some sub-commissioners suggested that judicial rents were still excessive, Patrick Cox, a tenant of land in the townland of Corry, County Westmeath (a 5-mile walk from Clonave, as the crow flies), saw his former rent of £17 11 shillings, imposed by his landlord, Eliza J. Bond, reduced to a judicial rent of £14.