Morgan O'Driscoll Irish & International Art Auction 12th November 2018

28 21 Francis William Topham RA (1808-1877) The Stepping Stones (1861) signed lower right and dated 1861 watercolour 45.70 x 40.5cm (18 x 16in) Provenance: Richard Haworth Gallery, Blackburn (label verso); Private Collection €2,000-€3,000 (£1,785-£2,678) Born in Leeds, Topham was an engraver, then an accomplished genre and figure painter, who visited the west of Ireland repeatedly from the 1840’s, and also Wales and Spain. Together with Frederick Goodall, and Alfred Downing Fripp, his legacy of detailed scenes of rural people, is highly valued by social historians. He exhibited widely, for example at the RA, the RHA and for 30 years regularly at the Old Watercolour Society. His depiction of this barefoot mother, her white bonnet suggestive of her married status, is typical of his Irish work. Fond of painting women and children, he shows her carrying her child across a stone ford, their substantial stone farmhouse in the background. Claudia Kinmonth, October 2018