Rare Robert Emmett Cabinet Card CDV Carte De Visite Irish Royalty Royal Photo IE

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Rare Robert Emmett Cabinet Card CDV Carte De Visite Irish Royalty Royal Photo IE:
$7999.96

LOT-R14. For your consideration is an exceptionally rare and historically important original antique victorian c.1840's cabinet card / CDV / carte de visite for Irish Republican, orator and rebel leader, Robert Emmett. Cabinet card measures approximately 2.25" x 4.0". CDV is original. Original photograph. Condition is fine. CDV is signed Robert Emmett; however, Emmett was executed for high treason in 1803 and this cabinet card was created in the 1840's. Museum quality. Extremely rare. Only one other example is known to exist and it is in the collection of Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, College Green, Dublin 2, Ireland.

Robert Emmet (4 March 1778 – 20 September 1803) was an Irish Republican, orator and rebel leader. Following the suppression of the United Irish uprising in 1798, he sought to organise a renewed attempt to overthrow the British Crown and Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland, and to establish a nationally representative government. Emmet entertained, but ultimately abandoned, hopes of immediate French assistance and of coordination with radical militants in Great Britain. In Ireland, many of the surviving veterans of '98 hesitated to lend their support, and his rising in Dublin in 1803 proved abortive.

Photograph by Lesage, Adolphe (1843-81). Dublin, Ireland; print seller, frame maker, photographer (fl. 1843-81). Dublin directories for 1843-75 record the firm at 10 Sackville Street, Dublin as print seller, frame-maker and general agent. At the same address 1876-80 described as ‘Photographer, Print-seller, Frame Maker, Picture Restorer, Artist Warehouse and Agent for Foreign Goods’. 1881, Mr Lesage, same address. A trade label on the back of a watercolor dated 1799 of Lt Col Pepper of Ballygarth, Co. Meath reads ‘A. Lesage, Print Seller, Frame Maker, Publisher, Artists Repository (from Paris) Lower Sackville Street, Dublin. Source: Glin, ‘Dublin Directories and Trade Labels’, Furniture History (1985).

Emmet’s Proclamation of the Provisional Government to the People of Ireland, his Speech from the Dock, and his "sacrificial" end on the gallows inspired later generations of Irish republicans. Patrick Pearse, who in 1916 was again to proclaim a provisional government in Dublin, declared Emmet's attempt "not a failure, but a triumph for that deathless thing we call Irish Nationality".

While Emmet hid in Rathfarnham, yeomen sought to extract information from Anne Devlin, prodding her with bayonets and half hanging her until she passed out.[28] Had he not insisted on taking his leave of his fiancée Sarah Curran (daughter of the disapproving John Philpot Curran)[4] he may have succeeded in joining Dowdall and Byrne in France. Emmet was captured on 25 August and taken to the Castle, then removed to Kilmainham. Vigorous but ineffectual efforts were made to procure his escape.

Emmet was tried and convicted for high treason on 19 September. The evidence against him had been overwhelming, but the Crown took the extra precaution of suborning his defence attorney, Leonard McNally, for £200 and a pension.[46] McNally's assistant Peter Burrowes could not be bought and represented Emmet as best he could.

Emmet's instruction, however, was not to offer a defence: he would not call any witnesses, "or to take up the time of the court". When on announcing this, McNally proposed that the trial was concluded, the prosecuting counsel William Plunket took to his feet. In what was widely regarded as an unnecessary attack on a doomed man, Plunket, who was to see himself appointed Solicitor-General, mocked Emmet as the deluded leader of a conspiracy encompassing "the bricklayer, the old clothes man, the hodman and the hostler".

Emmet's Speech from the Dock is especially remembered for his closing remarks. Historian Patrick Geoghehan has identified over seventy different versions of the text,[48] but in an early printing (1818) based on notes taken by Burrowes, Emmet concludes:

I am here ready to die. I am not allowed to vindicate my character; no man shall dare to vindicate my character; and when I am prevented from vindicating myself, let no man dare to calumniate me. Let my character and my motives repose in obscurity and peace, till other times and other men can do them justice. Then shall my character be vindicated; then may my epitaph be written.

Chief Justice Lord Norbury sentenced Emmet to be hanged, drawn and quartered, as was customary for conviction of treason. The following day, 20 September, Emmet was executed in Thomas Street in front of St. Catherine's. He was hanged and then beheaded once dead. As family members and friends of Robert had also been arrested, including some who had nothing to do with the rebellion, no one came forward to claim his remains out of fear of arrest.

On the eve of his execution, Emmet wrote from Kilmainham to the Chief Secretary for Ireland, William Wickham, whose "fairness" he acknowledged. He appears to have made a profound impression.

In December Wickham resigned his post, confessing to friends that "no consideration upon earth" could induce him "to remain after having maturely reflected" on the contents of the note he had received. He could not enforce laws "unjust, oppressive and unchristian" and intolerable to the memory of a man he had been "compelled by the duty of my office to pursue to the death". Wickham was persuaded that Emmet had been attempting to save Ireland from "a state of depression and humiliation" and that, had he himself been an Irishman, he "should most unquestionably have joined him".