The Collection Revealed: Nathaniel Hone (1831-1917)

• 
24 February 2009

Curated by Jessica O’Donnell

Over the coming months a series of spotlight exhibitions will offer an opportunity to take a closer look at the work of selected artists from the gallery’s prodigious permanent collection beginning with Nathaniel Hone in February 2009. The gallery’s conservation programme and lecture series will dovetail with this series of spotlight exhibitions from the collection.

Considered by Hugh Lane to be Ireland's greatest landscape painter, Nathaniel Hone was a prolific artist whose career included a prolonged period working in France, most notably at Barbizon where he came into contact with the the artists J.F. Millet, J.B.C. Corot and Henri Harpignies. Upon his return to Ireland in 1872 the countryside and seascapes around Malahide, where he lived, in north county Dublin became an enduring subject in his work and Evening, Malahide Sands c.1883 in the collection of Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane is widely regarded as one of his great works. The majority of the twelve paintings by Hone in the Hugh Lane Gallery's collection reveal Hone's facination with water, particularly the sea as well as ever changing light and weather conditions and are from the latter part of his artistic career.  A keen yachtsman, the great expanse of sea, waves, sky and clouds in his work are painted with vigour and energy and capture the wildness of the Atlantic ocean off County Clare and County Donegal as well as the North Sea off Lowestoft in England. On other occasions, such as with A Grey Day at Malahide, the mood of his landscapes and seacapes is more tranquil, still and reflective and tends to emphasis a more pastoral quality . In addition to painting in Ireland, Hone also made a number of works inspired by his travels abroad with his familiy around the Mediterranean, to Egypt and to Italy and two paintings View on the  Nile and Venice are also on view in Gallery Nine.

A full-colour illustrated booklet The Collection Revealed: Nathaniel Hone (1831-1917) with texts by Dr Julian Campbell, Jessica O'Donnell, Sarah Maisey and Kathryn Day Carrigan is on sale in the Gallery Bookshop.