28 by 19in. (71.1 by 48.3cm)

Title: PORTRAIT OF ALEXANDER WILLIAMS IN ACADEMY DRESS, 1914
Note: Alexander Williams (1846-1930) is known for his talent in landscape and marine painting, but was also a successful taxidermist, with a significant collection of his birds and small mammals held in the Natural History Museum in Dublin. Raised in Drogheda, Co. Louth, he was largely self-taught and received just a few evening lessons in drawing at the RDS (Royal Drawing School). He began exhibiting with the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1870 and would continue to show work there for a running total of sixty one years. In 1875 he was one of the founder members and first secretary of the Dublin Sketching Club (a post he was to hold for half a century). The club flourishes to this day. He also exhibited regularly with the Water Colour Society of Ireland, and contributed pictures to various other societies more sporadically.Following his election to the RHA as an associate member in 1884, he held his first solo exhibition at the Leinster Hall, Molesworth Street. What began as a two-day private affair with entry by invitation only, evolved into solo public exhibitions (preceded by private viewings) that ran for several weeks. These were prodigious affairs in which he thought nothing of showing a hundred pictures, sometimes more. He was adept at raising publicity for exhibitions, obtaining enduring patronage from successive Lord Lieutenants and their wives, and what were known as ‘the castle set.’ These solo exhibitions of Alexander Williams became eagerly awaited events in the social calendar of Dublin, drawing, at the height of his popularity crowds of a thousand and more. He maintained his solo exhibitions in Dublin, missing few years, until 1926. Outside Ireland, Williams made a number of forays into a number of English provincial towns, including Manchester and Birmingham and he exhibited for a number of years in Bond Street, London. Further afield, although he never himself travelled beyond the British Isles, his work was shown in Switzerland and Canada; and in America, at the World Fair in Chicago in 1893 he was represented by ‘Sweet Dublin Bay’, while at the St Louis World Fair of 1904, in association with the Congested District Board, he showed an extensive collection.Williams moved permanently to Achill Island in 1899 which would become a significant source of subjects for him, as seen in lots 133-136 which come from the estate of a collection in Achill.

pastel

signed and dated lower left