According to a file at the Heinz Archive and library the boy depicted in this painting grew up to become the last High Sheriff to burn a witch. The portrait attributed to Thomas Murray (1663-1735) shows Henry Stewart as a boy. Stewart died in 1717. The sitter was the son of William Stewart (1625-1706) and Margaret Shaw (b. 1625), who married in 1664 and lived at Killymoon Castle, County Tyrone in Northern Ireland, which William’s father had purchased in 1634. Henry Stewart became High Sheriff of County Tyrone in 1711. The portrait, from Killadoon House in Co. Kildare, comes up at Sotheby’s Royal and Nobel sale in London on January 21 with an estimate of £8,000-12,000.
