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Lot Essay
Tresham studied under Francis Robert West and Jacob Ennis at the Dublin Society Schools from 1765. In 1773 his Adam and Eve won the exhibition prize and is thought to have been bought by Lord Powerscourt. By 1775 he was in London where he met John Campbell, later 1st Baron Cawdor, who was to become a significant patron and with whom he travelled to Italy in the same year.
Tresham remained in Rome for fourteen years and it was there among an international circle of Neo-classical artists that included Thomas Jones, James Northcote, Antonio Canova and Henry Fuseli, that his taste was formed. Although he painted a number of landscapes in watercolour, and, in 1784, produced Le Avventure di Saffo, a book of sixteen aquatints, it is thought that much of his time was spent dealing in antiquities.
On his return to London in 1789, Tresham exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy (he was appointed ARA in 1791 and RA in 1799), and became a key contributor to Robert Bowyers History Gallery and John Boydells Shakespeare Gallery. In 1807 he succeeded John Opie as the Academy's professor of painting but retired after two years due to ill health.
The present picture would appear to be one of the few large oils executed during Tresham's Roman period. As Crookshank and the Knight of Glin note, 'The Venus and Cupid is so close to to his acquatint of The Dying Sappho in his Saffo that it must be an Italian work' (loc. cit., 2002). The view beyond the foliage that envelopes the elongated and mannered figures is presumably an allusion to Vesuvius, which Tresham visited after the eruption in 1781; an event the artist later recorded in The Ascent of Vesuvius (1785-91; Yale Center for British Art).
Tresham remained in Rome for fourteen years and it was there among an international circle of Neo-classical artists that included Thomas Jones, James Northcote, Antonio Canova and Henry Fuseli, that his taste was formed. Although he painted a number of landscapes in watercolour, and, in 1784, produced Le Avventure di Saffo, a book of sixteen aquatints, it is thought that much of his time was spent dealing in antiquities.
On his return to London in 1789, Tresham exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy (he was appointed ARA in 1791 and RA in 1799), and became a key contributor to Robert Bowyers History Gallery and John Boydells Shakespeare Gallery. In 1807 he succeeded John Opie as the Academy's professor of painting but retired after two years due to ill health.
The present picture would appear to be one of the few large oils executed during Tresham's Roman period. As Crookshank and the Knight of Glin note, 'The Venus and Cupid is so close to to his acquatint of The Dying Sappho in his Saffo that it must be an Italian work' (loc. cit., 2002). The view beyond the foliage that envelopes the elongated and mannered figures is presumably an allusion to Vesuvius, which Tresham visited after the eruption in 1781; an event the artist later recorded in The Ascent of Vesuvius (1785-91; Yale Center for British Art).