This included a number of Batoni’s portraits of Irish sitters and other Irish Grand Tour paintings. The acquisition in 1997 of a portrait by Pompeo Batoni of James Stewart of Killymoon prompted the exhibition James Stewart: An Irishman on the Grand Tour in 1999. Of particular interest are two portraits of the County Down heiress, Theodosia Hawkins-Magill, painted in the same year, 1765, by Gainsborough and Reynolds. Amongst the most notable British paintings are Virgil’s Tomb by Wright of Derby and three impressive full-length portraits: Robert King, 2nd Baron Kingston (1680) by John Michael Wright, Arthur, 1st Marquess of Donegall (1780) by Gainsborough and Harriet, Countess of Belfast (1822) by Lawrence. The Dutch collection includes work by Salomon van Ruysdael, Jan Pynas and Jan van Bijlert. ‘The Carrickfergus Madonna’, Winter and Spring by Pieter Brueghel the Younger and a Holy Family by Van Oost. This appetite could not have been known to the original collector of the etchings or his executors as they had no known connection with the north of Ireland.
Of these, almost half had never seen a work by Rembrandt before or visited the National Gallery. Over 28,500 visitors came to see the self-portrait in just eight weeks. That this was a gap to be filled was demonstrated in 2016 when the National Gallery generously lent Rembrandt’s Self Portrait at the age of 63 (Christie’s Masterpiece Tour) to the Ulster Museum. Whilst the decision to allocate these works to the Ulster Museum may seem unremarkable, it was nonetheless of genuine significance in that the etchings became the first works by Rembrandt to enter a public collection in Northern Ireland. Accepted in lieu of tax and allocated to the Ulster Museum, they represent some of Rembrandt’s most famous subjects: Bearded man in a furred cap and robe (1631), The Artist's Mother, seated at a table (1631), The Sleeping Herdsman (1644), Six's Bridge (1645), The Adoration of the Shepherds: with the lamp (1654) and The Descent from the Cross by torchlight (1654). Late in 2019, six small Rembrandt etchings arrived in Belfast.
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