Forrester, James (1730–76), artist, was born in July 1730 in Dublin. Little is known of his family connections or his early life. He studied under the artist and draughtsman Robert West (qv) (d. 1770) at the Dublin Society School of Drawing, and would have, most likely, known Hugh Douglas Hamilton (qv), who studied there during the same period. Forrester was awarded premiums by the Dublin Society in 1747 and 1750 and a first prize for drawing in 1752. He went to Rome in 1755 and spent the rest of his life there, although he sent works for exhibit to the Society of Artists in Dublin in 1765 and a 'large landscape' to the Royal Academy summer exhibition of 1771.
Shortly after his arrival in Rome, Forrester shared living accommodation with the Irish artists Robert Crone (qv) and Jacob Ennis (qv), with whom he had studied under West. In a close-knit community of artists, Forrester also maintained friendships with L. G. Blanchet, Peter Stephens and Jonathan Skelton. Stephens published a number of collections of views of Italy from his own paintings and Forrester providing etchings for some of these. Fr John Thorpe, Jesuit priest and antiquarian and agent for purchasing art works for Baron Arundell, relied very much on Forrester, who acted as a purchaser for him and often stored the paintings that Thorpe was unable to keep in his own lodgings. George Dance, the British architect and portraitist, shared accommodation with Forrester, and the British Museum holds a print made by Dance after one of Forrester's Italianate landscapes. Forrester was also friends with George Robertson, a fellow landscape artist who spent three years in Rome, and with the sculptor Joseph Nollekens, with whom he correspond after Nollekens returned to England, keeping him informed of the activities of artists in Rome.
Forrester made a tour around the Lazio region in 1769, taking in Caprarola, Narni, Ancona and Assisi, accompanied by Robertson, Nollekens and others. His record of the tour was later published by Robertson as A tour made in Italy in the year 1769 (1787). It describes Forrester's love of the Italian landscape and of the Gothic architecture of the area, which inspired in him a sense of solemnity and 'veneration' not found in the architecture of his own time. Forrester's descriptions fit very well with the idea of the 'picturesque' and at one point he observes the 'noble group of trees, clayey banks well broken, with some dashing waters, &c. which together are excellent objects for a painter' (Forrester, 6). Another entry in A tour gives further insight into the mind of Forrester and his attachment to the landscape: 'Mount Saracti at a distance, and fine woods of various trees arising out of the waving corn which surrounded us, afforded a scene superior to imagination, and I became transported with the enchanting solemnity with which nature was arrayed' (ibid., 8).
He was in Rome at the same time as James Barry (qv), who wrote to Edmund Burke (qv) complaining of Forrester competing for patronage from Sir Watkin Williams Wynn. In a letter to Nollekens, Forrester himself wrote of this rivalry: 'Tho' I do not suppose my friend Barry (as you call him) has the least regard for me, be assured I am not his enemy. Nay, I can hear with great pleasure of his merit and success, and really wish well to both, for it is beneath a man to harbour old animosities' (Bonhams, lot 60). It would only be expected that Wynn would purchase works by Forrester as the artist worked as a drawing instructor for him in late 1768. Among the other purchasers of his works were the Earl Fitzwilliam (qv), the duke of Gloucester, Lord Bute, Lord Arundell (friend of Thorpe), and Lord Shelburne (qv). Many of his works are now in private collections.
Forrester was also acknowledged as one of the few among the group of British and Irish artists in Rome to practise landscape painting. Many of his landscapes fit with his written descriptions from A tour, and feature tombs, Gothic and classical architecture, monks and moonlight scenes; the NGI, for example, has 'An Italianate landscape with figures by a tomb'. Thorpe stated that the Irish landscape artists were superior to the native Italian practitioners and saw Forrester's brilliance lying in his 'grave and solemn scenes of nature' (Crookshank, 141). His landscapes displayed a Claudean impulse and were also influenced by Poussin, a reason for some, such as the German painter Jacob Philipp Hackert, to be critical of Forrester for being imitative. This criticism can be countered by noting Forrester's attention to nature in its own right from his writing and his imaginative use of the real in his composition.
Two of his paintings, 'Landscape with monks by Lake Nemi' and 'Figures by a torrent in a stormy wooded landscape', originally purchased by the 4th Earl Fitzwilliam in 1767, were exhibited at the Pyms Gallery, London, in 2001, and were also shown in the exhibition 'Terror and the sublime' at the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, in 2009. 'A view of the Ponte Sisto' was sold by Sotheby's in 1988 as his 1771 Royal Academy exhibit. Two other works, 'A view of the Isola Tiberina' and 'A view of the Ponte Rotto', attributed to Forrester, were sold at Sotheby's, London, in 2013 (suggested by Dr Nicola Figgis of UCD as being by Forrester based on comparisons with his 'Ponte Sisto'). A drawing of Powerscourt waterfall is in the Ulster Museum. Unfortunately, not many of Forrester's works survive or, perhaps, have not been fully identified.
He died in Rome on 31 January 1776 and was buried within the city walls in the basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo. His memorial stone, which has now disappeared, read, in Latin: 'James Forrester from Dublin / eminent in the skills of painting pleasant things / here lies.' He was perhaps the only Irish artist to have been given such a distinction.