Jenico, Viscount Gormanston

Painted with precision, this portrait shows a young man named Jenico Preston with green eyes, typically pale Irish complexion and soft strawberry blonde curls wearing a vibrant blue coat with over-sized buttons and a red collar. The portrait is set in a gold frame, the reverse glazed to show brown hair flecked with gold and auburn.

Jenico Preston was born into a noble family in Ireland in January 1775. His parents, Anthony Preston, 11th Viscount Gormanston and Henrietta Robinson, had only been married for three months. In adulthood, Jenico was an Irish politician taking an active role in the cause of Catholic Emancipation. Aged 19, he married Viscountess Margaret Southwell of Castle Mattress, and with her had a large family of seven sons and two daughters. He oversaw the re-building of the family home, Gormanston Castle, in Co. Meath though the work was abruptly halted when his wife died in 1820. Jenico died forty years later, aged 85.

Gormanston Castle remained in the Preston family until the 1950s. An old legend claims that when the head of the family is dying all the foxes of County Meath (bar nursing vixens) emerge from their earths and make their way to the door of Gormanston Castle to keep vigil. This is in recognition of a previous Lord Gormanston who valiantly saved the life of a vixen and her young.

Walter Robertson was born in Dublin around 1750. Having trained at the Dublin Society School of Figure Drawing, Robertson travelled to London but failed to run a successful studio there. Back home in Dublin, he became friends with the American painter Gilbert Stuart and travelled with him to New York and Philadelphia where he met with better success. His final move was to India in the 1795 and it was there that he died in 1801.

APHA Registration: C3QJ5469