Thomas Sautell(e) Roberts , landscape painter. founder member of the Royal Hibernian Academy He first trained as an architect in Dublin under Thomas Ivory. His early work as a painter was largely topographical and frequently executed in watercolour (examples in Dublin, N.G.); views made in counties Wicklow and Dublin predominate, but he also travelled to the English Lake District and occasionally exhibited at the Royal Academy, London. Whereas his brother's work reveals an affinity with that of Thomas Gainsborough or Joseph Wright of Derby, Roberts's compositions, for example Landscape (c. 1800–1810; Dublin, N.G., see 1984 cat., no. 848), with their heavy brushwork, rougher terrain and more sentimental subject-matter, are more in the mode of Francis Wheatley or George Morland. In his day Roberts was praised for his depictions of domestic animals within landscape settings, but he also produced a number of views of Dublin that are topographically exact and of great charm. He was one of the leading landscape painters in Ireland in the early 19th century and a founder-member in 1823 of the Royal Hibernian Academy.
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