Cosmopolitan yet connected to local issues, Mervyn Wingfield, 7th Viscount Powerscourt played a prominent role in promoting Ireland’s cultural institutions at a pivotal time in their early history, writes Philip McEvansoneya
Although he played a prominent role in many areas of public life during a period of almost fifty years, the activities of Mervyn Wingfield, the 7th Viscount Powerscourt (1836-1904), have received little attention and never the comprehensive and detailed treatment they deserve. Powerscourt was a politician at both local and national levels, as happy to promote the Enniskerry Omnibus Company as he was to debate education or land issues in the House of Lords at Westminster. He was involved in many aspects of Irish cultural life and was affiliated with numerous bodies including the Royal Dublin Society and the Royal Hibernian Academy. The present article concentrates on some of Powerscourt’s activities as an art collector and his connections with the National Gallery of Ireland (NGI) and the National Museum of Ireland.
Powerscourt summed up his principal pleasures, including the hunt and art-collecting, in a book, A Description and History Powerscourt (1903). There he alluded to the travels which allowed him to develop the artistic tastes of the connoisseur which he employed in his public roles and in expanding and refreshing the family art collection at Powerscourt House, Co Wicklow (Fig). This photo shows one small section of the collection, containing works of many schools and genres. On the left hangs Tintoretto’s St Mark Preaching at Venice above landscapes by Salomon Ruysdael, Joseph Vernet and Charles Brooking. 1 _Powerscourt spent two decades and more repairing and improving the house. Unfortunately it was substantially burnt out in 1974. However the beautiful grounds survive as originally laid out by the 6th Viscount and his gardener, Daniel Robertson, in the early 1840s. According to Powerscourt himself, the upper stone terrace was influenced by that in the gardens of a Sicilian villa then known as the Villa Butera. An unrelated namesake, Alexander Robertson, worked in close collaboration with Powerscourt to complete the gardens. Although they considered other designs, and despite Powerscourt’s study of gardens in Austria, France and Germany, they stuck to the original vision including the sequence of impressive terraces which stretch down to the lake, framing the distant landscape, to the admiration of generations of visitors.
Muirne Lydon reveals the original brilliance of Murillo’s Prodigal Son as degraded varnish and old restorations are painstakingly removed from the 17th-century series at the National Gallery of Ireland
Using a selection of germane quotations Rolf Loeber recalls his mentor, the late Maurice Craig; their literary exchange taking the form of a tete-a-tete.
Michael Quane’s sculpture celebrates the ordinary citizen rather than leading political figures, writes Peter Murray in his appraisal of the Cork-born artist