Nesta Butler traces the career of William Baillie, printmaker, art connoisseur and dealer
William Baillie was baptised 300 years ago in St Mary’s Church, Mary Street, Dublin, near his father’s upholstery shop on Capel Street. His early life gives little hint of his future career as an artist. Following a Classical education at Thomas Sheridan’s school in the former King’s Mint House, Capel Street, he attended Trinity College from 1738 to 1742. After briefly pursuing legal studies at the Middle Temple in London, he joined as ensign the Somerset Light Infantry, which was then stationed in Flanders, in 1744. He took part in both the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–8) and the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), retiring in 1761, as a captain and a hero of the Battle of Minden (1759), to settle Nesta Butler traces the career of William Baillie, printmaker, art connoisseur and dealer Artistic licence in London. In the interval between the wars, as part of his army training, he learnt how to draw at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich. Baillie’s military career gave him the opportunity to acquaint himself with the best Dutch and German collections of the period and make important contacts, and this was of importance to his future life as connoisseur, printmaker, collector, dealer and artistic advisor to John Stuart, Third Earl of Bute – who had one of the earliest British collections of 17th-century Netherlandish art – and his circle.
Isabella Evangelisti visits the MAC in Belfast, where the work of selected painting graduates from Belfast School of Art is on show
