Nathaniel Hone RHA (1831 - 1917) Mediterranean Coastal Scene...

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€10,000 - €15,000

Nathaniel Hone RHA (1831 - 1917) Mediterranean Coastal Scene Oil on canvas, 85 x 127cm (33½ x 50'') Provenance: Collection of the Hon. Francis D. Murnaghan Jr., thence by descent Mediterranean Coastal Scene is a fine example of Nathaniel Hone’s South of France subjects painted on a very large canvas, - larger than the majority of his paintings. Hone made several visits to the Mediterranean in the 1870s and 1880s, painting at various locations along the coast, for instance at Cannes, Antibes, Nice and Villefranche, at Cap St. Martin, St. Jean-Cap Ferrat, Beaulieu, Ezé and Menton, and across the border to Bordighera in Italy. Having spent many years studying in Paris, painting in the Forest of Fountainebleu, then returning to Ireland, the sunshine and blue skies, the quality of light, the vegetation and the azure sea of the Riviera were a revelation to him. He was inspired to paint a series of colourful, light-filled watercolours and oils. These form a unique body of work in Hone’s oeuvre. Hone’s Mediterranean pictures were the first paintings which he exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin in the 1870s. During this period many French artists were drawn to the South of France, including Harpignes and Ziem, who Hone had known at Barbizon, and Impressionists such as Renoir, Berthe Morisot and Monet.[1] The Riviera was also becoming increasingly popular as a destination for tourists seeking winter sunshine. Hone painted along the coast, and was drawn to the fishing village of Beaulieu with it’s nearby beach and stretch of cliffs, known as ‘Petite Afrique’ (Little Africa) for its sunny, temperate climate. Hone painted a series of watercolours and oils of this coastline. These include the superb canvases Mediterranean Coastal Scene, Beaulieu near Nice (featured in an exhibition at The Gorry Gallery in 2023),[2] and the present painting Mediterranean Coastal Scene. The two pictures seem to have been painted at the same location but from different viewpoints, featuring headlands, palm trees, aloes, distant cliffs and blue sea. But in the present picture Hone takes an unusual approach to composition: rather than following a classical model of placing trees at one side or both sides of the foreground to frame the landscape, he places the palm trees, rocky bluff and aloes in centre left, allowing expanses of sky to be visible behind. There is another smaller painting of a Mediterranean Coastal Scene, in the National Gallery of Ireland (cat.no.1458), which features palm trees, aloes, blue sea and distant headland, but with a villa visible behind the trees. Hone was fascinated by aloe plants, with their sinuous, spiky leaves and striking blue-green, viridian colour. They form a focal point in several Mediterranean paintings, and are painted in broad, defined brushstrokes, casting dark shadows beneath them. The fronds of the palm trees are highlighted with more slender, golden strokes. The foreground is freely painted in the manner that Hone used in later landscapes. The straight horizon line of the sea halfway up the picture, with pinkish-gold cliffs in the distance, anchors the composition. Hone adopts a delicate, scuffed technique in the sky – fading from blue to pale blue to a pale pink-ochre above the horizon. Accustomed to the earthly and verdant tones and changeable skies of the Irish landscape, the sunshine, colours, pinks, blues and golds, and radiant light of the Mediterranean allowed Hone to experience nature in a new, freer way. His coastal South of France landscapes anticipate the colourful, sunny watercolours and oils that he was later to paint in Greece and Egypt.[3] Mediterranean Coastal Scene is not signed or initialled, (Hone rarely signed his canvases), so it is not known if it was exhibited at the RHA in Dublin during his lifetime. Julian Campbell, October 2024 Notes [1] See Jean-Paul Potron et Sylvie Amic, Paysage de Nice, Villefranche – Beaulieu du XVII ou XX siecles, Nice, 2000; and Patrick J. Murphy, An Art Lover’s Guide to the French Riviera, Letterfrack, 2016. [2] See J. Campbell, ‘Nathaniel Hone, ‘Mediterranean Coastal Scene, Beaulieu, near Nice’ in Exhibition of 18TH– 20TH Century Irish Paintings, Gorry Gallery, 2023, p.16, cat.no.17. [3] For a detailed study of Hone’s Greek paintings, see Anna Stathaki, An Irish Artist in Greece. A Study of Nathaniel Hone the Younger’s artworks in Greece between 1891 and 1892, MA dissertation, UCD, 2024.