CIRCA 1820-30, IN THE MANNER OF RUNDELL, BRIDGE AND RUNDELL

Westport House, Co. Mayo was designed by the celebrated Irish Palladian architect Richard Castle (or Cassels; 1690-1751) for John Browne, later created 1st Earl of Altamont (1709-1776) in the 1730s. John Denis Browne, 1st Marquess of Sligo (1756–1809) commissioned the most fashionable London architect of the time, James Wyatt (1746-1831), to update the earlier house and modify the interiors in 1781, who added neo-classical plasterwork inspired by the paintings discovered at the archaeological sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Wyatt's designs for the dining room survive and he was still involved at Westport as late as 1796, when he designed a conservatory for the house, which was apparently never completed and may have been his last Irish project. Howe Peter Browne, 2nd Marquess of Sligo (1788-1845) later employed James' son Benjamin Dean Wyatt between 1805 and 1821, to build a large new library and update the interiors again. Benjamin Dean's alterations resulted in the removal of much of his father's elegant plasterwork throughout Westport House, however it survives in magnificent detail in the dining room (J. Harris, 'The Wyatts at Westport', The Connoisseur, August 1966, p. 224).