[Album page featuring a list compiled by Thomas Crofton Croker of works exhibited by Henry Perronet Briggs at the Royal Academy]

Thomas Crofton Croker's handwritten list of works exhibited by Briggs and Foster at the Royal Academy ranges from 1832 to 1835. The page also features comments by Crofton Croker on some the paintings listed.

1854

Ink on paper

The list of works was evidently transcribed directly from the Royal Academy catalogues.

National Gallery of Ireland

CSIA

 

 

Born in Cork, Thomas Crofton Croker was the only son of Major Thomas Croker of the 38th Infantry. From an early age he travelled extensively around Ireland collecting poetry, songs and legends of the Gaelic Irish. He was an accomplished writer and competent artist. Through the influence of John Wilson Croker (no relation), Crofton Croker obtained a clerkship in the Admiralty in London, where he worked until 1850. He embarked upon a literary career in earnest while honouring his administrative duties, publishing 'Researches in the South of Ireland' in 1824 and 'The Fairy Legends' and 'Traditions of the South of Ireland' the following year. Among his close associates were Daniel Maclise and Walter Scott.

In 1844, the Cork-born antiquarian Thomas Crofton Croker acquired at auction a sketchbook that had belonged to Henry Perronet Briggs, his artist friend who had died a short period earlier. At the time of purchase, the album contained just ten studies by Briggs of costume details after the Dutch artist Jacques de Gheyn (1565-1629). Crofton Croker began to fill the empty pages with details of Briggs' exhibition history. The list continues uninterrupted until 1826 at which point Crofton Croker records the death of Thomas Foster, a mutual friend of his and Briggs. Crofton Croker continues the list, with occasional annotations, up to 1844, but then turns his attention almost exclusively to Foster. The album contains from that point extended notes by Crofton Croker, many of which draw on or quote from the testimony of other friends, on Foster's suicide and its immediate consequences, along with a large quantity of artworks, letters and other other ephemera relating to Foster. The album was discovered in Oxford in 2002 and acquired by the Centre for the Study of Irish Art the following year.