A trompe l'oeil portrait of a member of the Stacpoole family

Strickland Lowry was born at Whitehaven in Cumberland, and first worked as a portrait and landscape painter in Staffordshire and Shropshire. He later moved to Dublin, working there and around Northern Ireland before settling in Worcester. Trompe l'oeil paintings were not often produced in Ireland, although three additional works in this genre have been attributed to Lowry: A trompe l'oeil of a self-portrait mezzotint and A trompe l'oeil of a mezzotint of Nathaniel Hone's 'The Spartan Boy', both at the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin (inv. nos. NGI.4008 and NGI.4007), and A trompe l'oeil with a pearl necklace, a peacock feather, a quill, a bracelet, a letter inscribed to 'Mrs Frady, Elton' and a watercolor of a sportsman with his dog carrying a hare (Hunt collection, Limerick).