A Mountainous Wooded Landscape with figures gathering wood by Cork artist John Butts comes up at Sotheby’s sale of 44 Fitzwilliam Square, works from the estate of the late Patrick Kelly in London on March 18. It is estimated at £20,000-30,000. The talented artist, who died aged only 37 in 1764, worked as a teacher in Cork where his pupils included James Barry and Nathanial Grogan. He moved to Dublin around 1757 and worked predominantly as a scene painter. A comparable painting by the artist, Poachers: View in the Dargle, is at Tate Britain. In a letter written after his death James Barry described him as … “an unfortunate man, who with all his merit never met with any thing but cares and misery, which I may say hunted him into the very grave. His cast of genius was very much that of Claude’s, whom he resembles without any imitation more than anybody that I know of”. His View of Cork is one of the most popular works in the collection of the Crawford Gallery.
