The Long Gallery at Castletown: a rare example of the neoclassical taste for painted rooms all' antica and an expression of the intellectural and cultural worlds of Ireland's eighteenth-century elite

This thesis examines the neoclassical sensibility behind the creation of the all’antica painted decorations in the Long Gallery of Castletown House, Co. Kildare, commissioned during the tenure of Thomas and Louisa Conolly, and executed by the English artist Charles Reuben Ryley in 1775 and 1776. Employing a wide range of methodologies, including field work, archival research, iconographical analysis, and connoisseurship, this thesis argues that, despite the absence of an architect’s steering hand, the Long Gallery is strongly aligned with the neoclassical painted room genre established by the architects James ‘Athenian’ Stuart, Robert Adam and James Wyatt in the 1760s and 1770s. But it also stands apart in the sheer scale and complexity of its iconography, celebrating the history, mythology and visual legacy of the ancient world, created largely under female direction in an era when women did not typically receive a formal education in the classics. Intellectual and social vectors of influence and emulation are considered: the elite cultural, educational and family backgrounds of Thomas and Louisa Conolly are investigated, and the artistic and intellectual formation of their artist Ryley is researched. The central role of Louisa Conolly in directing the decorations is well established, but the importance of the scheme as an expression of female engagement with antiquity is established here for the first time. It is demonstrated that reading, amateur theatricals, female ‘accomplishments’, Grand Tour correspondence and souvenirs, and the architecture and interiors that formed the backdrop to their lives, ensured that elite women in the eighteenth century acquired a respectable knowledge of the classical world, facilitating their participation in the intellectual and material culture of the period. New research on Thomas Conolly, who is generally held to have played only a minor role in the project, shows that his family milieu, classical education in London and Geneva, and his Grand Tour equipped him to both inform and appreciate the all’antica scheme at Castletown. Research into Charles Reuben Ryley’s artistic formation establishes that his studentship at the Royal Academy Schools brought him into contact with the key decorative painters working in Britain at the time, accounting for his proficiency in both neoclassical subject painting and the grotesque style. The Long Gallery’s uniquely complex iconography, its erudition, and its distinctive application of ‘Raphaelesque’ grotesque decoration are explored for the first time. The antiquarian books of engravings, reproductions of antique gems, and works of ancient literature that were in circulation among the elite are analysed to uncover the unprecedented array of visual and literary sources behind the hundreds of painted images on the walls of the Long Gallery. The ingenious iconographical threads and connections woven through the scheme are revealed, allowing us to understand the room as it was understood by its authors – Louisa, her sister Sarah Bunbury (who collaborated in directing its execution), her husband Thomas, and her artist Ryley – and to appreciate the degree of knowledge and intense engagement with subjects and sources that was involved in its creation.