
(BERKELEY) GEORGE Autograph letter signed ("G:Cloyne"), as Bishop of Cloyne, to his lifelong friend and agent Thomas Prior, presenting him with a portrait of himself by his wife, Cloyne, 3 July 1746,
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(BERKELEY) GEORGE
Footnotes
ENCOURAGING THE ARTS AS A MEANS TO PROSPERITY: In a newly rediscovered letter, the Bishop of Cloyne presents a portrait of himself by his wife to his lifelong friend and agent Thomas Prior.
George Berkeley (1685-1753) met fellow scholar Thomas Prior (1681-1751) at the Duke of Ormond's School in Kilkenny, alma mater of Jonathan Swift and William Congreve, and their correspondence runs from 1713 until 1747, reflecting a long friendship during which Prior acted as his Dublin agent and looked after his legal and financial affairs. Prior was a great advocate for the promotion of trade and industry in Ireland and, in 1731 had established the Dublin Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Manufactures, Arts and Sciences (the "Society" Berkeley mentions here) which subsequently became the Royal Dublin Society. At this time both men were interested in the use of tar-water as a means of helping their poor Irish neighbours during the years of famine that followed the winter of 1739-40. Berkeley published his last major work on the subject Siris:... concerning the Virtues of Tar-Water in 1744 and in 1746, the year of our letter, Prior dedicated his own treatise to Lord Chesterfield, with whom he had corresponded during the latter's spell as viceroy to Ireland (1745-6) and who held him in great regard (Gilbert and Carter, ODNB).
By this letter, Berkeley presents Prior with a portrait of himself by his wife Anne (née Forster, c.1700-1786), who also shared his love of philosophy, music and the arts, and who had just taken up painting, much to his approval. Campbell Fraser refers to her portrait in his Works and the docket on our letter confirms his supposition that the portrait was latterly in the possession of the antiquarian Rev. Mervyn Archdall. As alluded to in our letter, Berkeley was a great advocate of the arts as a means to improvement, with his establishment at Cloyne renowned for its art collection and its passion for music, which he hoped would influence artistic activity in the region as a whole ('to be plain we are musically mad', he wrote). Amongst Berkeley's collection were several fine Old Masters including a Magdalen by Rubens and heads by Van Dyke and Kneller 'besides several good paintings performed in the house; - an example so happy that it has diffused itself into the adjacent gentleman's houses... The love of art as well as the love of truth... followed him into his contemplative old age' (Fraser, p.310).
The present letter is part of a large correspondence which forms the backbone of all biographies of Berkeley through letters made available to the biographer Joseph Stock by descendants of Thomas Prior, who printed an extract of our letter in 1776. Stock's version is also included in Alexander Campbell Fraser's The Works of George Berkeley, D.D. Formerly Bishop of Cloyne, 1871, p.308, T.E. Jessop & A.A. Luce The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, 1956, Vol.VIII, no.234 and Marc A. Hight The Correspondence of George Berkeley, 2003, no.337, but until now the full text of the letter has not been available to scholars. Fraser notes that 'Thomas Prior, to whom so many of them were addressed, was hardly one to draw out Berkeley's singular powers of reason and imagination', dealing as they do with practical and personal matters rather than the philosophical. They provide, nonetheless, an important insight into Berkeley's relationships and, for some periods of his life, remain the only record available of Berkeley's movements.
Provenance: Private Collection, USA.