The Collection Revealed was a series of spotlight exhibitions which offered 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.
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 fascination 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 seascapes 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 family around the Mediterranean, to Egypt and to Italy.
