GEORGE MULLINS (1740 - 1775)

Portrait of a Welsh Beggar ManSigned oil on canvas laid on woodSigned and Dated 1773Exhibited: Royal Academy, London 1773, No. 367, titled Portrait of a beggar in Wales.George Mullins (1740 – 1775)George Mullins studied at the Dublin Society’s Drawing School where he was a pupil of James Manning. Initially, he painted trays andsnuffbox lids at Thomas Wyse’s Japan and Birmingham ware workshop in Waterford City where he also painted a portrait of the Wysefamily. On his return to Dublin he married the owner of the Horseshoe and Magpie, a Temple Bar alehouse frequented by theatricalperformers. Horace Walpole, the English art connoisseur, noted that Mullin’s wife was the sister of the Irish portrait painter HughDouglas Hamilton (1739–1808). Throughout the period 1765-69 Mullins exhibited with the Society of Artists. The Dublin Societyawarded him a premium in 1763 for ‘best original landscape painted in oil’ and again in 1768 for a history piece. The Earl ofCharlemont, his earliest and most important patron, commissioned a set of four large classical landscapes for his house at Marino,Dublin. Representing the four times of day they now hang at Ãras an Uachtaráin, the official residence of the President of Ireland. In1770, Mullins moved to London where he exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1770 until his presumed death in 1775 aged 35.Strickland writes his pictures ‘excelled in tone and colour’ and were ‘much esteemed in his day’. Mullins also worked as a sign painter.The celebrated landscape painter Thomas Roberts (1748 – 1778) was his pupil.The present picture can be compared stylistically and compositionally to the artist’s Zeus, one of 15 cameo paintings on the panelledsaloon ceiling at the Myddleton family Chirk Castle in North Wales. Indeed, in both, the physical resemblance of the sitter – facialexpression, pose, and coiffure – is remarkably striking. So too, are the dates of execution (c. 1773) while the known locations ChirkCastle and Llangollen are less than 10 km. apart. Well-shod, well-dressed, and well-fleshed, Mullin’s ‘beggar man’ neatly fits therecorded ‘Arcadian tastes entertained by one of the ladies of the [Myddelton] family’. Acknowledgement: Ms. Louise Eslick, HouseSteward, Chirk Castle Collections: State Art Collection, Office of Public Works, Dublin; National Gallery of Ireland; Ashmolean Museum,Oxford; Bishop’s Palace, Waterford.Literature; Strickland, Dictionary of Irish Painters; Crookshank and Glin, Painters of Ireland, Burlington Magazine, No.49, Vol.11, 1907ed. 66 x 50.5 cm.
Dimensions: cm