WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART 26 FEBRUARY 2018

29 Nathaniel Hone RHA (1831-1917) LANDSCAPE (NORTH COUNTY DUBLIN) oil on canvas 18 by 24in. (45.7 by 61cm) Provenance: Sotheby’s, 2 June 1995, lot 270; Private collection ‘’How sweet to be a cloud, floating in the blue’’. 1 ‘’That Landscape painter who does not make his skies a very material part of his composition – neglects to avail himself of one of his greatest aids’’. 2 Thus commented 19th Century landscapist John Constable, while one of the most well-loved poems of the Romantic era, Daffodils by WilliamWordsworth (1798), opens with the lines: ‘’I wandered lonely as a cloud’’. 3 Having studied in Paris, painted for many years in the Forest of Fontainebleau, then visited Italy, Nathaniel Hone returned to Ireland in 1872, settling in north Co. Dublin. He painted much on the West coast of Ireland, and travelled abroad. But the coasts at Malahide and Portmarnock, with their beaches, sand dunes, choppy seas and massive skies, along with the pastures at Raheny, provided inspiration for many of his finest paintings. In many of his seascapes the strand or sea occupies only a third of the composition, the upper two thirds being filled by the sky, with its ever- changing clouds – sometimes signalling the onset of rain, at other times clearing to allow blue sky to appear. In the present painting, Landscape with Cloud, the cloud does not ‘wander’ but seems to float in the sky, perhaps breaking free from a larger formation; a Cumulus, suggestive of fair weather, it floats quite close to the beach and to the viewer. The picture is: ‘’an almost abstract composition, in which a single cloud hovers above a river, or perhaps an inlet of the sea, probably the strand at Malahide... The landscape is devoid of any detail... A patch of blue sky behind the cloud seems to highlight the pale silver, pink and brown tonalities of the painting…’’ 4 The left edge of the cloud is in shadow, but most of it is white and fluffy, or gold, lit up by sunlight. Hone conveys the wet, almost transparent, atmosphere of the scene and the reflection of the strand, centre left, may be the remains of an old wooden boat half covered by sand, (as features in several pictures by Hone). Above the beach is a strip of blue sea in the distance, and to the right the hazy form of an island, probably Ireland’s Eye. Landscape with cloud is one of a series of coastal subjects in which oval-shaped clouds float in the centre of the composition. These include Kelp Gatherers on a Beach, On the Malahide Sands, 5 A Sandy Coast (National Gallery of Ireland, cat. no. 1455) and A View of Malahide Strand (NGI cat. no. 1500). The latter, a smaller picture on board, may be a companion piece to the present canvas. As Hone’s career progressed, his work became more simplified, and broader in style; Landscape with cloud, executed in bold, curving brushstrokes may thus date from the latter part of his career. He did not view Nature in isolation, but unified, and thus linked different parts of the picture surface together in curling shapes and in colour: the blue and violet tones of the sky being echoed in the sands and the white and gold of the cloud reflected in the water. The subjects of skies and clouds were ones that had fascinated philosophers, scientists, artists, poets and musicians through the centuries. Traditionally clouds were regarded as symbolic of fertility (bringers of rain) and spiritual (the revelation of God).6 Meteorologists began to study clouds in a more systematic way, for instance Luke Howard’s writings influencing the writer Goethe and painter Constable. The latter was also interested in Thomas Forster’s Researched about Atmospheric Phenomena, (1815), and, while living in London, 1821-1822, painted numerous studies of the sky and clouds, often inscribing the time of the year, day, direction of the wind, and temperature, on the reverse of the picture 7 It is not known if Landscape with cloud was exhibited: he tended to give general titles to exhibition catalogues in Ireland, and not identify any with ‘cloud’ titles. However, it seems likely that such a characteristic canvas was exhibited at the RHA or elsewhere in Ireland during the artist’s lifetime. Dr Julian Campbell January 2018 1 The Incredible String Band, 1967. 2 John Constable’s Correspondence, vol. VI 1968, ed. R.B. Beckett, quoted by L Herrmann, Nineteenth Century British Painting, 2000, p.129. 3 ‘Daffodils’, 1804, by W. Wordsworth. 4 P. Murray, cited in Important Irish Art, James Adam/ Bonham’s 28 May 2003, p.90. 5 Important Irish Art, Adam’s, 27 March, 2002, lot 35; and Important Irish Art, Adam’s & Bonham’s, 26 May, 1999, lot 88).Comparison can also be made with White Cloud, 1884, by James Esor (Antwerp). 6 J. Tressider, Complete Dictionary of Symbols, 2004, p. 112. 7 See John Thorne, ‘Constable’s Clouds’, Burlington Magazine, 1979, p.697-704; K. Clarke, The Romantic Rebellion, 1973, 1976, p. 275 and L. Herrmann, 2000. €8,000-€12,000 (£6,990-£10,480 approx.) Click Here for Large Images & To Bid Lot 29