Gaspare Gabrielli, Landscape Painter

(fl. 1805-1830)

Landscape Painter

From A Dictionary of Irish Artists 1913

An Italian artist who was brought to Ireland from Rome by Lord Cloncurry in 1805 for the purpose of decorating rooms at Lyons, County Kildare. He lived at Lyons for a couple of years during the progress of his work, and married Lady Cloncurry's maid. The painted decorations done by him were "The Bay of Naples" and "The Bay of Dublin" on two walls of the dining-room. The latter still exists. He also did "Views of Herculaneum" in panels in the small drawing-room. Similar decorative work was done by him at Tanderagee Castle for the Duke of Manchester, and the painted walls in the drawing-room of No. 41 North Great George's Street are also his work.

Gabrielli practised for some years in Dublin as a landscape painter, and he contributed landscapes and views, sixty-six in all, to the various exhibitions between 1809 and 1814. He was Vice-President of the Society of Artists in 1811. His works were much esteemed; in a notice of the exhibition of the Hibernian Society of Artists in 1814 in the "Monthly Museum" his landscapes were described as "decidedly preeminent," and he was placed as a landscape painter above T. S. Roberts. In 1810 he published a set of six "etchings from nature." These "curious performances" received the not unmerited criticism of the "Hibernian Magazine": "We conceived it to be nearly impossible that any artist who was so accomplished a master of his pencil as Mr. Gabrielli is could have so completely mismanaged his etching needle." In 1819 Gabrielli was sent to Italy by some of his patrons to paint pictures. From Rome he sent home two landscapes, painted for Colonel White of Woodlands, which were exhibited in the Royal Academy. They were sold at Colonel White's sale in 1847. For his friend Count de Salis he painted several pictures, including two Swiss Views which he sent from Rome to the Royal Academy in 1829. Other works by him were: "A View of the South Side of Lord Cloncurry's House at Lyons," exhibited at the Society of Artists in Dublin in 1809; seven "Views of Killarney," sold at J. D. Herbert's sale in Dublin in 1837; "Sunset," a large picture, sold at Francis Johnston's sale in 1845; a "Grecian Landscape" exhibited at the British Institution in 1812. In Cromwell's "Excursions through Ireland," published in 1820, are two plates from drawings by Gabrielli: "Carlow Castle," and "Drimnagh Castle."

Gabrielli does not appear to have returned to Ireland from Italy, and the date of his death is not known.

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