Patrick Comerford
I recently came across a miniature portrait of James Comerford, dating from ca 1829, by the French miniaturist François Theodore Rochard and now in the Lady Cohen Collection at Kenwood House in Hampstead.
The miniature is a watercolour on ivory, and shows a young James Comerford with short curling brown hair, wearing a dark blue coat and top coat, checked cravat, with spy glass and fob seals, an ivy draped urn to his and right, a sunset sky.
The reverse of James Comerford’s portrait is inscribed in a later hand with the identification of James Comerford as the sitter, together with the information that he married ‘Ann Birrell’. An associated miniature of Ann Birrell by Rochard is fully signed by the artist and inscribed with his Howland Street address and the date 7 February 1829.
In an age before photography – and long before ‘selfies’ – these portable images served as intimate tokens of love and friendship or as reminders of lost, absent or deceased loved ones.
The miniature of James Comerford was part of the Lady Cohen Collection, featuring 65 miniatures by some of the leading artists of the 18th and 19th centuries. It was given to English Heritage through the Cultural Gift scheme of Arts Council England’s. Bryony Cohen is the wife of the retired High Court Judge, Sir Jonathan Lionel Cohen.
Louise Cooling, the English Heritage curator at Kenwood, said the collection was of outstanding art historical importance. The miniatures are mostly watercolour on ivory, and the miniatures include a double portrait of Mrs Wadham Wyndham and her sister Miss Slade by Andrew Robertson, a late miniature by Jeremiah Meyer, and a work by the last great Scottish miniaturist Robert Thorburn (1818-1885).
The heyday of the portrait miniature coincides with the time when Kenwood was home to the first three Earls of Mansfield and their families. For example, over eight years William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, commissioned 13 miniature copies of his portrait by Joshua Reynolds. ‘A large number of the miniatures commissioned by people who lived at Kenwood are lost, having likely been given away as gifts,’ Louise Cooling says.
The French miniaturist François Theodore Rochard (1798-1857) moved to London ca 1820, joining his brother who was already living there. Rochard was a popular portrait painter specialising in miniatures and in water colours and won two silver medals from the new Society of British Artists in 1823. He retired after his marriage in 1850 and he died in London on 31 October 1857.
His brother, Simon Jacques Rochard (1788-1872), was a painter of portrait miniatures in France, England and Brussels. He was only 20 when he painted a portrait of the Empress Joséphine for Napoleon and later other portraits of the imperial family. After Napoleon’s return from Elba in 1815, he was drafted into the army but fled to Brussels. There he received commissions to paint miniatures, including at least one of the Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.
Shortly after this, he moved to London, and there he painted numerous miniatures of leading society figures such as Princess Charlotte (1766-1828).
Kenwood House is a stately home on the north fringes of Hampstead Heath. The house was built in the late 17th century and was remodelled in the 18th century for William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, by Robert Adam. The house and part of the grounds were bought by Edward Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh, in 1925 and donated to the nation. It is now owned by London County Council and a popular visitor attraction, and holds a significant number of historic paintings and art works, including 63 Old Master paintings, while the gardens have sculptures by Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Eugène Dodeigne.
But I was curious to know the identity of this James Comerford whose portrait was painted in 1829 by the fashionable portraitist François Theodore Rochard, along with his future wife who is named at Kenwood in the catalogue of the Lady Cohen Collection as ‘Ann Birrell’.
My attention was drawn to this portrait last week as I was trying to trace an English artist in the 1950s who signed his work BP Comerford, and found myself researching the work and career of the artist Charles William (Bill) Comerford (1905-1961).
I am familiar with the work of the Irish miniaturist John Comerford (1770-1832), and some of his works are also the collection of miniatures in Kenwood House. John Comerford was a regular guest at the Langton House in the Butterslip, Kilkenny, of James Comerford (1720-1808) and Anne (Langton) Comerford, and painted miniature portraits of each of them in 1794 and again in 1797.
He probably also painted their nephew, James Comerford (1775-1825) of Newtownbarry (Bunclody), my great-great-grandfather, and James Comerford’s eldest son, Richard Comerford (1796-1848) of Newtownbarry, my great-grandfather’s eldest brother.
However, although they sat for John Comerford, neither James Comerford of Kilkenny nor James Comerford of Newtownbarry is the subject of the miniature portrait of James Comerford painted by Rochard in 1829 – both were dead by then.
I am now confident, however, that the sitter for Rochard’s portrait in 1829 was the Victorian book collector, antiquarian and notary James Comerford (1807-1881), who was married in 1829. This James Comerford was born at Holborn on 7 November 1807, in Castle Street, now Furnival Street, Holborn, and was baptised in Saint Andrew’s Church, Holborn, in March 1808.
He first practised as a notary public in partnership with TS Girdler as Comerford and Company at 27 Change Alley, Cornhill, London, from December 1827. Later, he practised from premises at 7 Tokenhouse Yard, Lothbury. James Comerford was also a magistrate or Justice of the Peace (JP), secretary to the Society of Public Notaries of London (1833), and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquarians (FSA, 1840).
He married 19-year-old Sarah Anne Bissett, daughter of Captain James Bissett, in Wilmington, Sussex, on 16 July 1828. So ‘Ann Birrell’ may be a misreading of Sarah Anne Bissett’s name in handwriting, and their portraits may have been commissioned in 1828, rather than 1829, in advance of their wedding.
Family tradition says that in his younger days James was something of a rake, who took fencing lessons from a fencing master, Henry Angelo, and fought a duel with a man named Atwood over his future wife. The adventurous and rakish spirit continued after their wedding, when Sarah and James Comerford took their honeymoon during the Belgian/Dutch civil war.
Sarah Anne Bissett was born in 1809, the daughter of a sea captain who died in the American war in 1812. Her eldest sister, Anna Maria Bissett, married the Revd Robert Philip Blake (1801-1841) curate of Wilmington, Sussex, and Stoke, near Guildford, at the time of Sarah’s wedding. He drowned at Niton, Isle of Wight, while swimming with his son, later the Revd Professor John Frederick Blake (1839-1906), lecturer in Comparative Anatomy, Charing Cross Hospital, London and Professor of Natural Science, University College Nottingham.
Between 1829 and 1851, James Comerford and his family were living at 7 Saint Andrew’s Place, Regent’s Park, London. By 1872, James Comerford was living in Framfield, Sussex.
Sarah and James Comerford were the parents of two sons and a daughter: James William Comerford (1829-1917), Charles Frederick Comerford (born 1831), and Emily Sarah (1842-1909), who married Henry Burchett in 1858 and later married the Revd Hamilton Brand.
James Comerford was a book collector and antiquarian. He built on his father’s earlier book collection, and amassed a library that included a large collection of county histories, local topographies and books of Catholic religious piety. He died on 8 March 1881 in the last cholera epidemic in London, and has many living descendants.
James Comerford’s bookplates have become collectors’ items … they perpetuate the claims of the Comerford family in Ireland to descent from the Comberford family of StaffordshireAfter his death, his son, Colonel James William Comerford (1829-1917), sold his library and antiquarian collection at a Sotheby’s auction on 16-20 November 1881. His books occasionally come back on the market, but more often they are valued for his heraldic bookplates with the motto So Ho Ho Dea Ne, than as antique books.
The most notable object of antiquarian interest in James Comerford’s private collection was the ‘Bosworth Crucifix.’ This 15th century bronze processional crucifix, measuring 585 mm x 280 mm, is now in the collection of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
The Bosworth Crucifix is said to have been dug up on the Field of Bosworth in Leicestershire around the year 1778, and came into the possession of the Comerford family around the year 1810.
I have still to see Rochard’s portrait of James Comerford’s wife Sarah Anne Bissett or ‘Ann Birrell’.
The Bosworth Crucifix … the most notable antiquarian item in James Comerford’s private collection, now in the collection of the Society of Antiquarians
