NATHANIEL HONE, R.H.A. | ON THE BANKS OF THE SEINE

Joseph Brennan;

Valentine Waterstone;

Bruce Judge;

Christie's, Dublin, 29 April 1985, lot 185;

Pyms Gallery, London;

John Duggan;

Christie's, Dublin, 26 May 1993, lot 92

Kenneth McConkey, A Free Spirit: Irish Art 1860-1960, 1990, p.28, illustrated fig.13

The present work offers an altogether more tranquil, summer scene than Nathaniel Hone's more familiar works of the Irish coast, its turbulent seas and stormy skies. Those paintings date from the 1870s onwards when Hone had returned to Ireland; however prior to this, pioneeringly he had spent two decades immersing himself in artistic circles in France. He was associated with the Barbizon school, encountering Millet, Courbet and 'le père Corot', and spent time in Brittany, Normandy and Paris. At Fontainebleau he encountered the young Impressionists, including Monet, Renoir and Sisley.  

Hone's work hovers between the Realists and Impressionists. Depicting rural life, they are natural, tonal and airy with a feeling for light as well as being painterly; yet he never abandons himself fully to colour and broken brushwork. The present painting demonstrates Hone's masterly sensitivities and relates closely to another work of the same title in the National Gallery of Ireland.