SAMPSON TOWGOOD ROCH (IRISH 1759-1847) Portrait miniature of Adam Douglas, wearing black coat and waistcoat, white shirt and frilled white cravat Signed on the obverse, TRoch and dated 1789 Watercolour on ivory Gold frame with fine plaited hair border bearing monogram AD and the number 44 in gold, engraved around the rim, Adam Douglas. No. 5 Clare Street 1789, the reverse glazed to reveal the sitter's monogram AD and the number 41 in gold on a fine plaited hair border around a central plaited hair aperture Oval, 70 mm (2 3\4 in) high Exhibited: Comerford Collection at the Irish Architectural Archives, Dublin, 2009 Literature: The Comerford Collection: Portrait Miniatures, (privately published, Dublin, 2009) pp 8, 28 (#87) and 67 (sitter # 28) Sampson Towgood Roch, the son of William and Mary Roch of Youghal, in County Cork, was born deaf. It is unknown with whom he studied; he may have been self-taught. By 1779 he had established himself in Dublin, and in the years following is known to have worked in England. Beginning in 1786 he lived in Cork; while there he married a distant cousin. In 1789 the couple moved to Bath, where his practice flourished. Roch returned to the family home in County Waterford in 1822; where he died in 1847